SIMS, James Marion, American surgeon: b. Lancaster County, S. C,, 25 Jan. 1813; d. New York, 13 Nov. 1883. He was graduated from South Carolina College in 1832; studied medicine at Charleston and at Philadelphia, and in 1835 began to practise. He was settled at Montgomery, Ala., during 1840-53, where he became known for his successful operations for strabismus and club-foot. In 1845 he made known his hypothesis on the cause and proper treatment of trismar narcentium. The effective ness of the treatment was later demonstrated by a long series of experiments. In the same year he began experiments to test a treatment he had conceived for vesico-vaginal fistula, in the course of which he devised the silver suture and several instruments, the chief of which is the duckbill speculum known as the Sims speculum. In 1853 he removed to New York and shortly began a movement for the es tablishment of a hospital for the diseases of women. A temporary structure was built in 1855, and a charter and appropriation were granted by the legislature in 1857 for the manent institution, built in 1866 on the pavilion system. Dr. Sims went to Europe in 1861 and
performed the operation for vesico-vaginal fistula in the hospitals of London, Paris, Edin burgh and Dublin. In 1862 he settled in Paris and secured a lucrative practice. From 1864 to 1868 he practised in London, and in the latter year returned to America. He was again in Paris in 1870, and was surgeon-in-chief of an Anglo-American ambulance corps that treated both French and German soldiers after the battle of Sedan. In 1872 he was reappointed a member of the board of surgeons of the Woman's Hospital, but resigned in 1874. Among his published works are 'Trismus Nascentium> (1846) ; 'Silver Sutures in Sur (1868) ; 'On Intra-Uterine Fibroid Tumors) (1874) ; 'Clinical Notes on Uterine Surgery' (1865) ; 'The Anglo-American Am bulance' (1870) ; 'Treatise on Ovariotomy> (1873) ; of the Discovery of Anasthe ; Story of My (1884). A bronze statue of him is in Bryant Park, New York. Consult Flint, Austin, 'In Memoriam James Marion Sims' (New York 1886).