The frontier surgeon who pioneered abdominal operations by experimenting on enslaved women

Health · Published 3 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: Ephraim McDowell is celebrated as the father of abdominal surgery for his 1809 ovariotomy on Jane Todd Crawford. Yet, his medical breakthroughs relied on a darker reality: he used enslaved women as operative test cases to refine his techniques, a legacy often omitted from his official historical commemoration.

In 1809, Ephraim McDowell performed the first successful ovariotomy on Jane Todd Crawford, a 45-year-old woman who had traveled 60 miles on horseback to his Danville, Kentucky practice. Believing she was pregnant with twins, Crawford instead carried a 22-pound ovarian tumor. McDowell, trained at the University of Edinburgh, performed the 25-minute procedure on a kitchen table without anesthesia or antisepsis—concepts that would not emerge until decades later. Crawford survived, living another 32 years, and the operation became a landmark in medical history.

While McDowell’s success with Crawford is widely documented, his broader surgical career involved significant ethical compromises. Between 1809 and 1818, he conducted at least five ovariotomies, including the one on Crawford. Four of these procedures were performed on enslaved women. Unlike Crawford, these women were used as operative test cases to develop his techniques, and there is no record of their consent or adequate recovery time. While a bronze statue of McDowell stands in the U.S. Capitol, no memorial exists for the enslaved individuals who bore the physical cost of his medical experimentation.

McDowell’s success is often attributed to his meticulous nature and cleanliness, traits that likely helped his patients avoid the fatal peritonitis that plagued other surgeons of the era. However, the historical narrative surrounding his life is complicated by potential fabrication; a biography written by his granddaughter in the early 20th century is considered by the McDowell House Museum to be roughly 70 percent invented. Today, the museum focuses on his frontier life and the Crawford surgery, though it acknowledges that his other, less-celebrated operations remain a critical part of his medical record.

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