When Sims and his wife Theresa first moved to Montgomery, it was to serve as a ‘plantation physician’ to the local area. Sims was determined to open a hospital to service the enslaved population of the town. They made up two thirds of its inhabitants. Sims had an uneven path as a physician at this point. He hadn’t excelled at medical school, graduating from Jefferson Medical college as a lacklustre student. He admitted himself that he “felt no particular interest in my profession at the beginning of it apart from making a living.”

His lack of enthusiasm had cost his previous patients dear, with his first two patients in Lancaster, South Carolina dying in his care. Both were infants. Sims had been despondent afterwards although the fact that he had attempted to treat them with no clinical experience, logged hospital time or diagnostic experience should have caused him to know better. It’s unclear whether this stark lesson was what engaged his passion in medicine or if it was something that grew with time, but he became determined to make a name for himself.
Whether for monetary gain or out of altruism is also unclear.

Two things are for certain, Sims was incredibly inventive, with an active, imaginative and unorthodox approach to medicine, and he loved to be the centre of attention. Sims set out with the mindset of a man trying to make a name for himself, whether for good or ill, he certainly succeeded. His small practice in Montgomery was specifically designed for the treatment of women, a practice that had been uniformly ignored throughout the medical profession. This was partly due to the fact that most male surgeons found treating the female reproductive organs incredibly distasteful. An opinion that Sims himself expressed, saying in his autobiography that he hated, “investigating the organs of the female pelvis.”

#jmarionsims #history #historydocumentary #diaryofjuliuscaesar #historyonfleek

sources:
Kelly, Howard A.; Burrage, Walter L. (eds.). "Sims, James Marion" . American Medical Biographies . Baltimore: The Norman, Remington Company.

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