Unwell Women

May 1, 2021

In her debut work, Cleghorn who holds a PhD in humanities and cultural studies, crafts an informative overview of medical practices, focusing in particular on medicine's disregard for women patients and for women as healers and physicians. Starting with the ancient Greeks, threading through the Victorian era and a post-World War II England and United States, and ending at the present day, Cleghorn recounts stories of harm and abuse brought upon women by the medical establishment. She doesn't shy away from describing the compounded pain brought to bear on Black women when white women fought for their own rights at Black women's expense. Some descriptions are almost too painful to read; however, the author honors these women and reminds readers that their lives were very much real, even as they were dehumanized by physicians. Especially notable are sections about the origins of gynecology and about 19th-century physicians' scant knowledge of ovaries and fallopian tubes. Cleghorn weaves in her own story towards the book's end; it mirrors the stories of the women throughout history who were considered unreliable narrators of their own health. VERDICT An insightful account that is especially recommended for those interested in the history of medicine where it intersects with women's health, as well as readers interested in women's and gender studies.--Rachel M. Minkin, Michigan State Univ. Libs., East Lansing

Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2021
From time immemorial, as long as there have been physicians, there has been a double standard when it comes to women's health. Medicine, a science one hopes will be flawless, has an imperfect history, due in part to its being a product of the values and beliefs of its time, as are the scientific and technical strides its findings inspire. The ancient Greeks, the founders of medical science, deemed women to be inferior to men, and that unfortunate and erroneous attitude prevailed throughout the centuries. Some say it lingers still. From the female reproductive system to autoimmune and endocrine diseases to mental-health disorders, medicine has viewed gender and biology through the same lens, and in a field dominated by male physicians, researchers, and scholars, that perspective has often been derisive and dismissive of women's genuine health concerns. 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.

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Starred review from April 15, 2021
A feminist historian and cultural critic explores how age-old myths about gender roles and behaviors have shaped the history of medicine. Medical science is notorious for misunderstanding the ailments of female bodies. Throughout this illuminating and disturbing survey, Cleghorn argues convincingly that this is because medicine is a patriarchal science. Hippocrates believed that the uterus controlled women's health. Following in his footsteps, later Greek physicians blamed female illness on "wandering womb[s]." The author suggests that Hippocrates' ideas aligned with the prevailing view that women existed solely for the purposes of childbearing/rearing. Hippocratic misogyny became entrenched in later European cultural and medical thinking, as suggested by how more "enlightened" doctors from the 18th century still blamed (White) women's physical and emotional pains on reproductive malfunctions. Enslaved women of color fared far worse: At best, they were the objects of cruel experiments because White patriarchy had deemed them unable to feel pain. By the mid-1800s, early suffragists like Harriet Taylor Mill, whom doctors diagnosed with "nervous disorders," began to more openly question the patriarchal status quo. But the patriarchal establishment used the old argument of hysteria to discredit them and their political activities. As White women became more socially empowered in the 20th century, medicine became another tool of patriarchy to control them. In the 1920s and '30s, the American medical establishment sanctioned forced sterilization of thousands of Black Southern women "in the name of social improvement." A decade later in Britain, the British government controlled White female reproduction with welfare programs designed to "encourage women to produce and nurture citizens of the future." Thoughtful and often disturbing, this exhaustively researched book shows why women--including minority women and Cleghorn herself, who has lupus--must fight to be heard in a system that not only ignores them, but often makes them sicker. Powerful, provocative, necessary reading.

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