The Story of My Life

“Most of the knowledge we have of his early life comes from his autobiography, The Story of My Life, which he wrote 40 years after the experiments that are going to take up the bulk of our discussion today.”

“So, following tens of thousands of words of ausive praise, the book opens with Sims explaining how a bunch of people just demanded he write this autobiography.”

“He notes that his parents were descended from English colonists in Virginia, that his family had come to North America in 1740, and that his grandfather served in the Revolutionary War.”

“I don't remember a whole lot about being six. Uh, but he does note that quote, "The teacher flogged the boys occasionally, very severely, and stood some of them up in the corner with a fool's cap on."”

“He's going to live at his house. Uh he he clearly finds found the experience somewhat traumatizing because he writes pointedly in his autobiography, quote, "My convictions now are that the best place for a child under 10 years of age is with his mother."”

“He graduates in 1835 and is in his words quote a lackluster student who showed little ambition. He noted in his memoirs, "I felt no particular interest in my profession at the beginning of it apart from making a living.”

“Um, he lives there in a disreputable boom town, presumably drinking too much due to the fact that he described it as quote, "nothing but a pile of jin houses, stables, blacksmith shops, grog shops, taverns, and stores thrown together in one promiscuous huddle."”

“He is effectively their owner during this period of time in a legal sense of the word. He begins his experiments in 1845. He is 33 years old. Most historians writing about this will note that he had three patients, Lucy, Anarcha, and Betsy.”

“His argument then is that this particular medical problem is such a nightmare that these women were basically beating down Sims's door to get treatment in his memoir Sims claims that he received enthusiastic consent from Lucy Anarka and Betsy we have no actual evidence of this.”

“And I want to quote from that write up by Monica Cronin again. She notes that Sims published his memoirs well after the end of slavery in the United States and that he may consciously have wanted to put himself in a positive light by claiming”

“While Marian Sims does make sure to claim that the three women who are named in his book gave their consent, he also introduces quite blly that there were multiple other enslaved women he used as test subjects, by some accounts like seven.”