The Founder of Modern Gynecology, AKA The American Mengele

J. Marion Sims is regarded by the medical cummunity as the "founder of modern gynecology".

He was also, quite arguably, the American Mengele. Both men conducted medical experiments on people that they regarded as sub-humans. Sims bought or rented slaves to experiment with in order to develop a procedure to repair vaginal fistulas. He operated on at least one woman thirty times or more. All of Sims's experiments were conducted without anesthesia, which was then known to the medical community, even in Alabama. As noted, even his contemporaries were advising him to back off of his human experiments. Sims had none of it. (He also performed medical experiments on infant slaves.)

When he perfected his procedure, he performed repair operations on white women, and under anesthesia.

Andrew Jackson is being removed from the $20, in part, because he was an unapologetic racist who flouted the law and was responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of people in his campaign of ethnic cleansing. The Confederate battle flag has been coming down because it was the flag under which the fight was waged to preserve slavery. The honors given to pro-slavers are under debate.

To this should be added J. Marion Sims, M.D., who built his reputation on the bodies of his enslaved victims. Whether or not his statue is taken down, his victims, the slaves upon which Sims conducted his experiments, should be prominently remembered next to the memorials to the American Mengele.