Unwell Women: A Journey Through Medicine And Myth in a Man-Made World

Product Information

The content also helped me better understand my grandmother and mother as women, given the way society and the medical world treated them, and given what they’d grown up believing about themselves. An] eye-opening new book. . . . Cleghorn meticulously constructs an often enraging framework to evince how and why the patriarchal medical world has been so detrimental to women, especially underserved women and women of color.” We still have some work left to do to fix medicine and I hope we can do it where its fair to everyone and no one is discouraged/dismissed. Poplett, Georgia (4 February 2022). "An interview with Elinor Cleghorn: "History is not a linear road to good" ". Lucy Writers Platform . Retrieved 3 April 2022. This is a statement that every single health professional should carry and keep with them, on every single shift at the doctor's surgery, or at the hospital. Health professionals should also be reminded to read the patients notes, as for some reason, communication within parts of the health service, is entirely non existent. We should not not have to constantly keep explaining ourselves to the same person, only to be sent away with yet more paracetamol. This book really, really made my blood boil, and although women's health experiences to do with pain have improved from many years ago, even as of now, it is still heavily stigmatized, and laden with the pathetic line 'Are you sure you're not imagining it?'.

Throughout modern medicine and up to today, being a woman itself is considered a pathological state. The female body has been “shrouded in mystery” and cloaked in deliberately weaved mysticism. The uterus has been a source of mythical malintent as well as a precious resource that patriarchy seeks to control, including to this very day. The genesis of the word “hysteria” will cause you to completely excise this word from your vocabulary. Medical experients done on female POC and American slaves were crimes against humanity and are rarely discussed. But speaking to other women who have experienced similar problems, I’ve realised that it is not as easy for everyone. Friends and other women often struggle to talk about what is wrong with their bodies. They know that their unwellness is non-normative and that there may not yet be the medical words to express their experience in a way that seems socially acceptable. Elinor Cleghorn schließt mit ihrer eigenen Krankengeschichte den Kreis ihres – auch für Laien gut lesbaren – medizinhistorischen Werks. Die Beschränkung auf die USA und Großbritannien finde ich etwas unbefriedigend, weil ich beide Gesundheits- und Gesellschafts-Systeme für sehr speziell halte. Im zweiten Kapitel „Ende des 19. Jhdt. bis in die 1940-er Jahre“ zeigt Cleghorn, wie die Frauenbewegung „nicht nur für Wahlrecht und politische Beteiligung“ kämpfte, „sondern auch gegen die Bedingungen und Umstände, unter denen Leben und Freiheit von Frauen beschnitten worden.“ Zu dieser Zeit war die Medizin aus der Sicht der cis Männern viel weiter, aber für Frauen hieß es noch unter Schmerzen zu leiden. „Selbst wenn sich eine Frau die Betreuung durch ihren Hausarzt oder einen Geburtshilfearzt leisten konnte, erhält sie eine Anästhesie nur, wenn er fähig und bereit war, sie einzusetzen.“ Auch hier glaubten viele Ärzte, dass die Anästhesie gefährlich für die Frau ist, weil „die meisten Mediziner vertraten zu dem die Ansicht, sie selbst könnten die Schmerzen der Geburt am besten beurteilen.“

A richly detailed, wide-ranging and enraging history... Unwell Women is not just a compelling investigation, but an essential one' Observer Feminist historian and academic Cleghorn, herself a victim of medical misdiagnosis, brings first-hand knowledge of the gender bias endemic in the medical profession to this scholarly yet personal, specific yet comprehensive study of dangerously outdated medical practices and attitudes.” Cleghorn] combines her own story with a feminist history of illness and a plea for better listening. It shows how centuries of ignorance and condescension led to failings that endure today.” An epic yet accessible social, cultural and scientific history of women’s health traces the roots of sexism and racism in modern Western medicine from ancient texts through to the present day…. A powerful and necessary work of social and cultural history.”

She consistently uses the term "ovariotomy" to refer to oophorectomy. Ovariotomy literally means an incision into the ovary, such as in ovarian cystectomies; it does NOT, in current and common medical usage, refer to REMOVAL of the ovary. British readers, help me here: is this term commonly used in UK to refer to oophorectomy? The UK government’s recent women’s health strategy, in which it solicited evidence from women about their treatment by the healthcare system, is groundbreaking, she notes. “It’s probably the first time in history that women’s subjective experiences and voices are used. That’s an important place to begin because women are not a monolith.”Seamlessly melding scholarship with passion, Unwell Women is the definition of unputdownable’ Telegraph Cleghorn hopes her book helps anyone who’s had a difficult or painful health experience “feel validated and valued, because this can be so isolating, so demoralizing and dehumanizing. But having an illness is also meaningful in the sense that you’re part of this production of very important knowledge. I hope readers can situate themselves in this history that hopefully now we can start to change.”