Multiple groups demanded the removal of the statue, which sat on a pedestal praising his achievements as 'brilliant' without acknowledging the women who endured his painful experiments. The 1890s statue was installed across the street from the New York Academy of Medicine in 1934, with a plaque praising Sims' 'brilliant achievement.' Sims perfected a technique to repair fistulas, which are holes between the vagina and the bladder or rectum and can lead to incontinence, by repeatedly conducting painful experimental surgeries on enslaved black women without using anesthesia.Ī woman stands beside the empty pedestal where a statue of J. A new informational plaque will be added both to the empty pedestal and the relocated statue, and the city is commissioning new artwork to reflect the issues raised by Sims' legacy. The statue will be moved to a cemetery in Brooklyn where Sims, sometimes called the 'father of gynecology,' is buried. Marion Sims, a 19th-century gynecologist who experimented on enslaved women, from a pedestal in Central Park.
A New York City panel decided to move the controversial statue after outcry, because many of Sims' medical breakthroughs came from experimenting on enslaved black women without anesthesia. Marion Sims is taken down from its pedestal in Central Park on Tuesday.
