GYNECOLOGY THROUGH ANARCHA WESTCOTT
This is the story of the beginning of gynecology thanks to the least known Anarcha (Amaka) Westcott (estimated: 1828–1869/70). Amaka was a slave in those dark days, she was exploited and had no legal rights to defend herself. Through her repressed circumstance, she subjected herself to primitive surgeries in order to restore her young health in the day anesthesia did not exist. Her pain and sacrifice were great but pivotal to the development of gynecology. Our information comes from records kept by her enslavers and the “gynecologist”, a plantation physician who treated her. They include records of his experiments and his autobiography.
Amaka first turns up in his autobiography as a “little mulatto girl” living in the doctor’s house in Mount Meigs, Alabama. He says on one of the pages, “A little negro girl would sleep in the room with me, and hand me a drink of water occasionally”. She next appears as, “a young colored woman, about seventeen years of age, well developed” and belonging to a certain Mr. Wescott who lived a mile from Dr. J. Marion Sims’ house in Montgomery, Alabama. Sims was called in to assist after her labor lasted three days. There are no source comments on how Amaka became pregnant, so the unidentified father of her stillborn child may well have been her “owner”, Mr. Wescott, a supposedly kind-hearted man; or even perhaps, Dr. Sims himself. No one knows because no official records were kept of the births and deaths of slaves. If she were born in 1834, and she was 32 in 1856, then she actually got pregnant at the age of 13, when she was first treated by Dr. Sims. As an enslaved woman, Amaka was illiterate by law.
After the stillbirth, Amaka was brought back again to Sims because she had several unhealed tears in her vagina and rectum — vesicovaginal fistula and rectovaginal fistula. These tears meant she had no control over her urine and feces, which caused her to have excruciating pain from her uncontrollable bowel and urine movements flowing through her open wounds. Being unable to control her urine and feces led to infections, inflamed tissue, and unpleasant odors.
Sims performed 30 (thirty) experimental and nonconsensual, anesthesia-free operations on Amaka to successfully close the tears. She underwent a series of painful experimental surgical procedures without anesthesia, although it had recently become available. However, following the procedures, Sims administered opium, which was then an accepted pain reliever. The experimental procedures that Sims performed on her and later on 2 other enslaved women, revolutionized gynecological surgery. The technique Sims developed became the first-ever treatment for vesicovaginal fistulae. This later generated much controversy among medical historians over the use of experimental surgery.
On December 21, 1856, at the age of 32, Amaka was admitted to Sims’ Woman’s Hospital in New York, where she was admitted for about a month and was discharged in January of 1857 as cured to her enslaver William Lewis Maury, U.S. Navy, Caroline County, Virginia.
In the 1870 Census, her name is spelled Anaky Jackson, and on her death record, Ankey. A tombstone for an “Annacay” wife of Lorenzo Jackson, was found by chance in King George County, Virginia, adjacent to Caroline County. The death date on the Vital Statistics does not match that on her tombstone (1869/70).
J. Marion Sims (1813–1883) was arguably the most famous American surgeon of the 19th century and today he is generally acknowledged as the founder of modern surgical gynecology.
Amaka, Betsy, and Lucy were three enslaved women who lived and worked on different plantations near Montgomery, Alabama, in the 1840s. All three women developed a painful medical condition after childbirth at an early age, that caused them to lose control of their bladders and bowels. Betsey and Lucy were the 2 other women sent to him with the same condition not long after he delivered Amaka’s child. Betsy was “17 or 18 years old”, according to Sims’ memoir, and Lucy was “about 18 years old”.
The 3 Mothers of Gynecology Monument by Michelle Browder was unveiled in Montgomery, Alabama, on September 24, 2021. It is located at 17 Mildred Street, near the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, and is 15 feet (4.6 m) high.
To conclude, we pay homage to Amaka for her strength, courage, and bravery. She persevered through 30 surgeries without any anesthesia at only 13 years of age. This is only one of the many stories of Blacks under the heavy and racist bondage of slavery in the USA. However unpleasant, may all truths of man’s ugly history be told as raw as they may be, to serve as a lesson for posterity.
In the 21st century, Amaka is a heroine for all “black’ women and a martyr for gynecology and all women of the world.
Sammy RNAJ — sammy.rnaj.writer@gmail.com
