Show Notes
A Hottentot Venus displayed in a London cage: how did 19th-century medical "science" turn Black bodies into specimens?
The preserved cast that turned Sarah Baartman into "science"
In this episode, we trace a chain of documented events linking Sarah Baartman’s postmortem display to surgical experiments on enslaved women and to mid-20th-century medical practices. We follow the people, procedures, and published arguments that normalized using Black bodies for display and experiment, and ask how those methods persisted into modern medicine.
Person: Henrietta Lacks Person: Sarah Baartman Person: Anarcha; Lucy; Betsey Event: Postmortem dissection and casting of Baartman by Georges Cuvier Event: Repeated gynecological operations by J. Marion Sims without anesthesia
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