In the summer of 1845, a young enslaved Black girl named Anarcha was suffering after an extremely difficult childbirth in Alabama. She had been in labour for around three days.
When Dr J. Marion Sims was called to help, he used forceps to deliver the baby. The baby did not survive.
But Anarcha did. Her ordeal, however, was far from over.
The prolonged labour had left her with devastating injuries known as obstetric fistulas — abnormal openings between the reproductive tract and the bladder or rectum. She was left unable to control her urine and bowel movements. Sims initially considered her condition incurable.
For Anarcha, this meant living with constant physical suffering and the humiliation and isolation that could accompany it.
And she was still enslaved.
What we don’t know
We do not know who fathered Anarcha’s child. No surviving record names the father.
That absence is particularly significant because Anarcha was enslaved, and historians have documented the sexual exploitation and forced reproduction of enslaved women under slavery. Research into the plantation where Anarcha was enslaved has raised the possibility that her pregnancy may have resulted from sexual violence, and that one of the white men who controlled the plantation may have been the child’s father.
But we cannot know this with certainty.
What we can say is that Anarcha was a young enslaved girl who became pregnant within a system in which she had no legal control over her own body or reproductive life. The identity of her child’s father may have been lost to history — but the circumstances in which that pregnancy occurred cannot be separated from the reality of slavery.
A body treated as an experiment
Anarcha was not alone.Two other enslaved women whose names have survived are Lucy Zimmerman and Betsey Harris. They too suffered from childbirth-related fistulas and were subjected to Sims’ repeated experimental operations.
Their names matter because they are among the very few women whose identities survived the historical record. Sims wrote about several other enslaved women who underwent his experiments, but their names were never recorded.
Anarcha, Lucy and Betsey. Three names where history should have left many more.
Sims wanted to find a surgical way to repair obstetric fistulas.What followed was not one operation. It was years of experimentation.
Sims repeatedly operated on Anarcha and the other women, changing his techniques when they failed and trying again.
Anarcha endured around 30 operations during this period. Think about that.
Thirty operations on the same young woman while doctors tried to work out how to repair her injuries. The procedures were painful, invasive and experimental.
And they were performed without anaesthesia.
The pain was not an unfortunate detail
Sims began his experiments in 1845, before ether anaesthesia had been publicly demonstrated in the United States. But anaesthesia became available during the years that followed.Sims still did not use it for these women throughout his four years of experimentation. His own writings describe Lucy enduring surgery without anaesthesia and praise her for her “heroism and bravery”.
But bravery does not mean there was no pain. And endurance does not mean consent.
These women were enslaved. They did not have the freedom that a modern patient has to simply refuse treatment and walk away. Sims wrote that the women wanted to be cured and that at least one woman was eager for the operations to continue.
But their own voices have not survived to tell us what they wanted, what they feared or how they experienced what was being done to their bodies.
That absence matters.
Anarcha was more than a patient
The women were not simply lying passively on an operating table. They also helped Sims. They assisted with procedures and cared for one another during the years they spent undergoing treatment.
In Sims’ makeshift hospital, they became part of the process through which he developed and refined his surgical techniques.
But there is an uncomfortable truth at the centre of this history:
The women endured the failures so that the technique could eventually succeed.
When an operation failed, they suffered the consequences.
When Sims changed his method, they underwent another operation.
When an improvement was discovered, it was because their bodies had provided the evidence.
Anarcha’s body became one of the places where modern gynaecological surgery was developed.
The breakthrough came at a terrible cost
Eventually, Sims developed a technique that successfully repaired Anarcha’s fistula. He used silver sutures and refined his surgical method through repeated experimentation. The medical achievement was significant. But it is impossible to separate that achievement from the circumstances in which it was made.
The women were enslaved.
They could not give consent in the way we understand it today.
They were repeatedly subjected to painful procedures.
And their suffering became part of Sims’ path to medical recognition.
Modern medical historians have therefore increasingly challenged the traditional story in which Sims is presented simply as a pioneering doctor who discovered a new technique.
The question is not whether the technique worked. It did.
The question is what — and who — made that discovery possible?
The women history almost forgot
Sims went on to become one of the most famous figures in American medical history. He was later celebrated as the “father of modern gynaecology”. But the women whose bodies were central to his work were largely forgotten. Sims wrote about his experiments. He wrote about his surgical discoveries. He wrote about his own achievements.
But we do not have Anarcha’s account.
We do not have Lucy’s account.
We do not have Betsey’s account.
And the names of several other enslaved women involved in Sims’ experiments were never recorded at all.
Sims wrote of finding “six or seven” other cases of obstetric fistula, but did not preserve their names.
They were there. They suffered. They helped him. And then they disappeared from the historical record.
Who was Anarcha?
For a long time, almost everything known about Anarcha came from Sims himself. More recent historians and researchers have worked to recover more of her life and identity. Even her name carries a warning about how easily history can be distorted.
She is widely known today as Anarcha Westcott, while historian J. C. Hallman has argued that there is no surviving evidence that Anarcha herself actually used Westcott as a surname. Sims referred to the plantation where she was enslaved, and the surname appears to have been attached to her much later.
It is a small detail with a much bigger meaning.
For so long, Anarcha’s identity was reconstructed from records created by other people. Her body was documented. Her operations were documented. Her surgeon’s achievements were documented. But her own voice was not.
Remembering Anarcha, Lucy and Betsey
Today, Anarcha, Lucy and Betsey are increasingly being recognised as central figures in the history of gynaecology. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists formally recognises the three women and acknowledges the painful experimentation they endured.
Their stories have also inspired artists, historians, writers and activists who are trying to restore the women to a history that once centred almost entirely on the doctor who operated on them. That matters because medical progress should never require us to forget the people who paid the price for it.
Anarcha was not simply a medical case.
She was a young girl who experienced a traumatic childbirth.
She lived with devastating injuries.
She endured years of painful operations.
She was denied the freedom to make choices about her own body that we now regard as fundamental to medical care.
And she survived.
Why Anarcha still matters
Anarcha’s story is about much more than the history of surgery. It is about race, gender, slavery, bodily autonomy and medical ethics. It asks us to look more closely at whose experiences have been treated as important enough to record — and whose have been left behind.
For generations, the story of Sims was told as a story of medical progress. Now, we can tell the full story.
One that includes the women.
One that acknowledges their suffering.
One that remembers that the medical knowledge developed through these experiments came at a human cost.
And one that gives Anarcha something she was denied in her own lifetime: to be remembered as a person, rather than simply as a body.
A final thought
There is no verified quotation from Anarcha herself that we can use. Her words were not preserved. So rather than putting words into her mouth, perhaps the most truthful ending is to acknowledge that silence:
Her suffering was recorded.
Her surgeon was celebrated.
Her voice was lost.
But her name remains.
Sources & Further Reading
Monica Cronin — “Anarcha, Betsey, Lucy, and the women whose names were not recorded: The legacy of J Marion Sims”
Anaesthesia and Intensive Care, 2020. A detailed examination of the historical evidence surrounding Sims’ experiments, consent and anaesthesia. (Sage Journals)
American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists — “Betsey, Lucy, and Anarcha Days of Recognition”
A professional medical organisation’s recognition of the three women’s place in the history of obstetrics and gynaecology. (ACOG)
Bettina Judd — Patient
A work of poetry and research centred on the history of Anarcha, Betsey and Lucy and the legacy of medical experimentation on Black women. (blacklawrencepress.com)
J. C. Hallman — Say Anarcha
Research into Anarcha’s life, identity and the historical record surrounding her. Hallman’s work also examines why the name “Anarcha Westcott” itself requires some historical qualification. (Macmillan Publishers)
The Role of Feminist Health Humanities Scholarship and Black Women’s Artistry in Re-Shaping the Origin Narrative of Modern U.S. Gynecology
Research examining the names and histories of Anarcha Westcott, Lucy Zimmerman and Betsey Harris and the wider group of enslaved people connected to Sims’ work. (MDPI)
