Dr. Simms similarly used his slaves to research his line of practice, but also used them to practice surgeries. Dr. Simms was a gynecologist who used his slaves to discover a technique that repaired the vesicovaginal vistula, which is a severe complication in childbirth. The operations that he performed had not been performed prior to his time, making his discoveries incredibly significant to women and has brought a great deal of knowledge to research. His research has saved several lives and allowed a better understanding in gynecology. However his means of discovering his award winning procedures are questionable because of the ethics present his his time compared to ours now. In his studies, he operated on three main slaves up to thirty times using no anesthesia, even though it was available during that time, but he did give them opium after the surgeries. After perfecting his procedure on other slaves, he started to perform it on white women; however this time, he used anesthesia. Dr. Simms' reasoning behind what he did was due to him viewing African Americans as a lower social level than white people. His lack of fair treatment toward his slaves compared to the white women demonstrates a form of medical racism during Simms' time.