Say Anarcha

A critically acclaimed reckoning with the birth of women¢s healthcare that illuminates the sacrifices of a young woman who changed the world only to be forgotten by it¢"until now.

For more than a century, Dr. J. Marion Sims was hailed as the ¢father of modern gynecology.¢ He founded a hospital in New York City and had a profitable career treating gentry and royalty in Europe, becoming one of the world¢s first celebrity surgeons. Statues were built in his honor, but he wasn¢t the hero he had made himself appear to be.

Sims¢s greatest medical accolade was his so-called cure for obstetric fistula, which did forever alter the path of women¢s health. But the road to that treatment was several years of experimental surgeries¢"without anesthesia¢"on a young enslaved woman known as Anarcha.

One medical text after another hailed Anarcha as the embodiment of the pivotal role that Sims played in the history of surgery. Decades later, a groundswell of women objecting to Sims¢s legacy celebrated Anarcha as the ¢mother of gynecology.¢ Little was known about the woman herself. The written record would have us believe Anarcha disappeared; she did not.

Through tenacious research, J. C. Hallman has unearthed the first evidence of Anarcha¢s life that did not come from Sims¢s suspect reports. Hallman reveals that after helping to spark a patient-centered model of care that continues to improve women¢s lives today, Anarcha lived on as a midwife, nurse, and ¢doctor woman.¢

Say Anarcha excavates history, deconstructing the biographical smoke screen of a surgeon who has falsely been enshrined as a medical pioneer and bringing forth a heroic Black woman to her rightful place at the center of the creation story of modern women¢s health care.