Why a Statue of the 'Father of Gynecology' Had to Come Down
J. Marion Sims is known as the “father” of modern gynecology, and also as a monster. On Tuesday, the city of New York took down a statue honoring Sims in Central Park and will move it to his grave, after a city commission convened by Mayor Bill de Blasio decided that the founder of the nation’s first women’s hospital was no longer worthy of uncritical celebration.
The debate over the Sims statue echoes the debate over Confederate monuments, with supporters of keeping the statue accusing those of wanting to remove it of attempting to erase history. Sims developed a groundbreaking series of treatments for a condition known as , “an abnormal opening between the bladder and the has been neglected until recently, Sims’s reliance on human experimentation has only become controversial in the past few decades.
