2021/08/11 by Raza S. Hoda, Syed A. Hoda · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · Medicine · #Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes #Medical History and Innovations #Gynecological conditions and treatments
paper · doi:10.1093/ajcp/aqab152
openalex publication_date 2021/08/11 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/16
The history of medicine, of illness, is every bit as social and cultural as it is scientific. It is a history of people, of their bodies and their lives, not just of physicians. —Elinor Cleghorn, in Unwell Women Unwell Women provides an alternative overview of women’s illnesses since the time of Hippocrates. It documents how women’s bodies have almost always been treated as inherently deficient or even defective. The book is a scorching indictment of physicians, mostly men and some women, who have been complicit in such stigmatization—some distressing instances of which follow. “Hysteria” (from hystera, Greek for uterus) was historically used as a diagnosis for a variety of ailments ostensibly initiated by “an unfulfilled, unemployed uterus moving out of place, wreaking havoc on the organs it reached.” The witch trials of some centuries ago relied on doctors’ “diagnosis.” A prominent 19th century obstetrician thought of women as “gestational and painful creatures.” Most lobotomies in the 20th century were performed on women (virtually all for questionable reasons). Birth control trials of a few decades ago had undertones of eugenics. In Unwell Women, Elinor Cleghorn, a British historian, bridges scholarship with passion in documenting details of how women’s biology has been misunderstood or mishandled. The stories told here range from Anne Greene’s stupefying survival on the gallows, to the contentious creation of the speculum, to the erratic evolution of analgesia during labor. Misogyny and patriarchy practiced by professionals, especially on those who have been historically underserved in one manner or another (or literally enslaved), is detailed. The book documents condescension that unfailingly led to unseemly narratives, some of which endure today. It is no laughing matter when endometriosis—a disease that has obviously existed for thousands of years and afflicts 1 in 10 women across the world—is called “a career woman’s disease.” Notwithstanding the relentless narrative of “old stories, fallacies, assumptions, and myths” around diseases of women, Cleghorn admits that “gender difference is intimately stitched into the fabric of humanness.” These differences need to be understood rather than misconstrued. We know that womankind is relatively more prone to endocrine (particularly thyroid) diseases and autoimmune ailments. Spinal meningiomas have a striking predilection for women, and mediastinal germinomas occur in men. Coronavirus disease 2019 kills fewer women, as does human immunodeficiency virus. Some of this disparity may be related to social factors, and not all can be simplistically ascribed to women having double the number of X chromosomes. Regrettably, the book only passingly mentions the many triumphs in female medicine, including the “Pap” test. Astonishingly, it mostly skips breast diseases. Unwell Women is timely grist for the mill of reform against discrimination in any form. It declares that prejudice, howsoever disguised, is passe in medicine (as elsewhere). Bravo!