Say Anarcha

In 1846, a young surgeon, J. Marion Sims began several years of experimental surgeries on a young enslaved woman known as Anarcha. This series of procedures - performed without anaesthesia and resulting in Anarcha's so-called 'cure' - forever altered the path of women's health. Despite brutal practices and failed techniques, Sims proclaimed himself the curer of obstetric fistula, a horrific condition that had stymied the medical world for centuries. In telling the stories of the 'Mother' and 'Father' of gynaecology, this title excavates the history of a heroic enslaved woman and deconstructs the biographical smokescreen of a surgeon whom history has falsely enshrined as a heroic pioneer.