geoff: The history of gynecology
as a medical specialty has deep
roots in the American south but
that legacy is as complicated as
the history of the south itself.
Correspondent Fred de Sam Lazaro
has our report from Alabama's
capital, Montgomery.
It is part of Fred's series
"Agents for change" and our arts
and culture series, canvas.
>> Welcome to more than a tour.
Fred: For some years, she has
conducted trolley tours of
Montgomery area.
From Rosa parks home, to the bus
depot that is now the freedom
ride's museum.
>> This is where they were
beaten and bludgeoned right
here.
Fred: Alabama's capital is a
living history museum of the
civil-rights era, with so many
iconic events, people, and
places.
But for Browder, artist by
training, activists by leaning,
there is one chapter of an
earlier history that she is
working to rewrite.
It has manifested in the
monument on the capital brought
-- grounds to Jane Sims, he was
a physician who practiced in the
1840's, developing tools for
pelvic exams, and a technique to
sutra vaginally tears.
Two Michelle, but is only half
of the story.
>> There is nothing on the
monument that says anything
about the women he worked on.
>> Absolutely not.
Nothing of these 11 enslaved
girls of African dissent that
were tortured, mutilated without
in see that -- without
anesthesia, nothing about what
they contributed.
Fred: No mention in a well known
paintings as the father of
modern gynecology.
Michelle Browder first solid --
first saw it as an art student.
>> I was triggeredl.
.
From there, I promised myself
that one day I would change that
narrative.
Got the welding station.
Fred: A promise renewed years
later when she moved to
Montgomery and discovered the
statue at the capital.
>> I was horrified.
I still am.
If he is the father of
gynecology, then where are the
brothers?
Fred: Browder decided she would
do something about it.
Relying heavily on sin's own
notes, she focused on the three
women named in his writings.
That is a lot of welding and
school.
How many people doing this?
>> 15 volunteers.
Fred: Today, about a mile from
the monument are soaring rod
iron tributes to the women she
calls the mothers of gynecology.
Betsy, Lucy, and anarca.
>> They did not have autonomy,
so it made sense to not have
arms or feet.
Fred: Young women endured months
of trial and errors.
The humiliating vaginally injury
usually caused by obstructed
labor, renders women in
continent unable to bear
children.
>> If you see around her legs,
that wire represents the silk
sutra.
The sutures he used to basically
torture them, and then of
course, Betsy, her crown is made
up of the speculum.
Fred: Tell us the significance
of the flower in its place.
>> Throughout all of the trauma,
something came out of it that
has been useful.
For women suffering from this
condition.
>> The first time I ever viewed
the monument, I cried.
I didn't know exactly why.
Fred: Lauren Marcel and Alana
Taylor our local artists in
recent transplants to
Montgomery.
They were on the tour.
>> Just seeing that work erected
in just -- in such a way as a
healing device was beautiful.
>> The only thing that
differentiates us from that --
from those women is time.
Fred: There was no such thing as
informed consent from subjects
in experimental medical trials.
The only consent that mattered
had to come from slaveholders,
who had a keen economic interest
in the health of their workers,
and because these were young
women, a particular interest in
their reproductive health.
Especially so after the
transatlantic slave trade was
abolished.
>> If it is outlawed in 1808,
that we cannot go back in
traffic folks from Africa, then
where are we getting these
people?
Plantations.
Breeding plantations.
Black women, their wounds are
the engine that maintain the
institution of slavery.
Fred: Deidre is a medical
historian and author.
As for anesthesia, she says it
was not commonly used in his
day.
But his reason for avoiding it
rested on a widely held
stereotype that black people do
not feel pain.
Something contradicted, she says
come in his own work.
>> I call it racial cognizant
dissidents.
He holds onto the sets of
beliefs that are swirling in the
19th century, that black people
are somehow different than white
people biologically.
But he will write this patient
lost sense of herself and
struggled violently as we had to
restrain her during surgery.
Why would you need to restrain a
black patient who is insensible
to paint?
>> Look at it today that even
with the advancements we have,
African-American women tend to
have high mortality and
morbidity.
I think it is just a
trickle-down from the troubles
our ancestors had to endure.
Fred: Latoya Clark, a Montgomery
obstetrician gynecologist, says
anti-black stereotypes have
endured through the years.
Even today, she notes studies
find many providers believe
African-Americans feel less
pain, at their complaints are
exaggerated.
The flip side, she says, his
deep distrust of the health care
system.
Do you have patients who
actively want to see you because
they think you are more
culturally competent, because
they think you would better
understand their predicament?
>> Yes, I have had numerous
patients that say, I have seen a
man gynecologist all my life,
and now I want to see a female
gynecologist, or an
African-American gynecologist.
Reporter: For Michelle Browder,
the next step in reframing the
legacy is quite literal.
A mural based on that fateful
painting, this time with sim's
on the operating table.
It will be installed in a new
mothers of gynecology center she
is opening in a downtown
Montgomery building that is
brimming with history and irony.
>> This is the site of the
niekro women's hospital.
Fred: Very site it turns out
where Jay Marion Sims
experimented on his enslaved
patients.
When they were not on the table,
she says come in these women
became skilled surgical
attendance, nursing women
through their ordeals.
Tell us your grand plan for the
space now.
>> Prenatal care, rolling it up
stairs, a teaching clinic the
hopes of teaching with dignity
and respect.
Fred: She says she has faced
pushback in this deep red state,
where he is revered for work
that was indeed a frat -- indeed
groundbreaking.
>> I have had doctors say I am
actually trying to stain this
man's reputation, who has done
something good.
He was a man of his time.
In any case, whether or not he
was a man of his time, then his
time was barbaric, and
therefore, he was barbaric.
Let's start there.
And then seek out ways to help
and repair what was broken.
Fred: And then there have been
moments of grace, notably after
she explained her plans for the
new center to the white owners
of the building.
>> She says, Michelle, little
miss gone with the wind, she was
like, we are just so proud of
you.
And if you were going to do all
of that, we are going to let you
have that building for $35,000.
Fred: Not what you expected.
>> Don't judge the book by the
cover.
Fred: The building is appraised
at $250,000, she says.
But the ribbon-cutting for the
mothers of gynecology health and
wellness museum and clinic is
scheduled this coming mother's
day.
For the pbs newshour, I am hard
to say malaise or, in
Montgomery, Alabama.