Publication of account of multiple surgeries on "a servant"

Item

Title: Publication of account of multiple surgeries on "a servant"
Description: Surgeon John Peter Mettauer published an article describing surgeries he had undertaken to relieve the occurance of vesico-vaginal fistula in two subjects: one a 34-year old woman, and the other a 20-year old woman, described as a servant and presumably enslaved. In his article, Mettauer describes operating on the latter woman at least eight times, at least twice a year, until he "relinquished the case." Though Mettauer considered the surgical procedure on the 34-year old woman successful, all of the operations on the 20-year old woman ended in failure, which Mettauer attributed to "sexual intercourse" which he believed "defeated several of the operations."
Event Type: See all items with this value Mention
Action Status: See all items with this value Completed
Date: July 1847
Date Certainty: Inferred
Source: See all items with this value Mettauer, John Peter, “On Vesico-Vaginal Fistulae.” American Journal of the Medical Sciences, vol. xiv (July 1847): 119.; Newspaper
Primary Participant: Female Servant
Primary Participant Description: "Aged about twenty, of good constitution, and well-formed."
Freedom Status: See all items with this value Unknown
Age: 20; Adult Age Group
Author: John Peter Mettauer
Additional Participant: See all items with this value John Peter Mettauer
Perpetrator: John Peter Mettauer
Symptom: Vesico-vaginal fistula
Treatment: Surgery