My health has been complicated for about 7 years or so. As it is all coinciding with the menstrual cycle, I first tried pain relief, which didn't actually help. After a year or so, I started suffering from not only physical symptoms of pain, but then there were migraines, fatigue, hallucinations, palpitations, insomnia and debilitating brain fog for two weeks of every month. So, instead of waiting for nothing, I did my own research, and thought it could be PMDD. When suggesting this to a health professional, I was hoping to receive support, but instead, I was given yet more painkillers, and was told to rest more. Rest more! Still, even after seeing a female consultant, I still couldn't get my point across, and in fact, this particular person laughed at me, like I was stupid, and I didn't know what I was talking about. On the other hand, Cleghorn isn't actually a trained historian of medicine (her Ph.D. is in "humanities and cultural studies", and her dissertation appears to have been on twentieth-century dance and film studies), and it shows. Her understanding of ancient and medieval history simply isn't strong, either in the general terms or in the specifics of medical history. There are factual errors (no, Gutenberg didn't invent the printing press in 1500; no, dissection was not illegal in the Middle Ages), simplistic presentations of medieval women like Jacoba Felicie and Trota (the yas queen framing of the latter in particular had me side-eyeing), and an overall reliance on cliché not grounded in any real knowledge of pre-modern history (the Middle Ages as a "time of superstition" while the eighteenth-century was one of enlightenment—both characterisations that don't quite work because they're founded on a Whiggish belief in history as an upward trajectory). Unwell Women gives us the history of women's health treatment by a male-dominated system, from hysterics, menstruation, childbirth, birth control, and forced sterilization, to our modern day dismissal of chronic health issues.

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.” During the recent anxieties about the AstraZeneca Covid vaccine and its possible link to blood clots, many women felt obliged to point out, on social media and in the press, that the risk of fatal thrombosis was significantly higher from using hormonal contraception, and yet this continues to be prescribed to millions of women without anything like the level of concern or scrutiny that the vaccine has received. The potential danger of a medication that only affects women is less of a headline-grabber, it seems. In fact, when the pill was first licensed in the US in 1960 it contained more than three times the levels of synthetic hormones than the modern version, and the side-effects – including fatal pulmonary embolisms and thrombosis – were deliberately downplayed. It took a sustained grassroots campaign by women’s groups to bring the issue to the attention of a congressional hearing in 1970. “From the beginning, the pill was couched as a way for women to take control of their bodies and fertility,” writes cultural historian Elinor Cleghorn in her debut book, Unwell Women. “But this also means that the costs – physical and mental – remain women’s burdens.” Now, don't misread me here, these topics are vitally important when it comes to women's health, and the topics are as timely and important as they ever have been. What they aren't, in my opinion, are topics about being unwell or misdiagnosed. A trailblazing, conversation-starting history of women’s health—from the earliest medical ideas about women’s illnesses to hormones and autoimmune diseases—brought together in a fascinating sweeping narrative. I thought this book was written well, and I liked how the chapters are clearly laid out in different sections. There isn't one that I didn't enjoy reading, and learning all about, because obviously, I don't know it all.Okay, raise your hand if you’ve ever had your symptoms totally dismissed by a doctor! . . . Well, Elinor Cleghorn’s eye-opening book takes a deep dive into the history of how the medical system has failed women (all the way from Ancient Greece to modern day problems like getting Endometriosis diagnosed) and how women are often seen as unreliable sources for what they’re feeling in their own bodies.” Nevertheless, Cleghorn is undoubtedly right that “the cultural geography of women’s chronic ill-health is shifting”, and her own clear account contributes to this change in a significant way. She is not wrong when she writes that “we are the most reliable narrators of what is happening in our own bodies”. Still, is it possible to be wholly reliable in a language that is not yet fully one’s own? Women may struggle to narrate what is happening to their bodies without a systematic structure in place through which to receive and share this knowledge. Sometimes, simple speech is not as easy as it seems. But we must hope for the shift that Cleghorn sees to continue, one which her own book makes steady steps towards. Running parallel to this history of frustrations and injustices is an empowering alternative history of the resistances and beneficial contributions of women. She cites the pioneering American physician Mary Putnam Jacobi, who in the 1870s disputed the idea that women required rest during menstruation. “Male physicians at the time were using just anecdotes and conjecture, but Putnam Jacobi employed subjective knowledge from women to soundly disprove them. There’s a quiet radicalism in using women’s knowledge about themselves to change the culture of medical inequality.” A richly detailed, wide-ranging and enraging history… Unwell Women is not just a compelling investigation, but an essential one’ Observer Olisin halunnut pitää tästä enemmän. Onhan tämä kaikkinensa hieno ja tärkeä teos, mutta muutama juttu jäi kaihertamaan.

A trailblazing, conversation-starting history of women's health - from the earliest medical ideas about women's illnesses to hormones and autoimmune diseases - brought together in a fascinating sweeping narrative. Unwell Women is a comprehensive and clearly communicated history of the way medicine and doctors have treated women throughout history. Starting in the ancient Greek times where any ailments women suffered were blamed on her "wandering uterus", to all women's ailments being blamed on hysteria and the weak female mind, forced hysterectomies and unneeded lobotomy. Whilst a good deal of this book made me feel angry, I can't lie I couldn't help but stifle some giggles during the Ancient Greek parts at the image of a wandering, mischievous uterus roaming around causing havoc! The history of medicine is every bit as social and cultural as it is scientific, and male dominance is cemented in its foundations. But even the author Elinor Cleghorn, who spent the past year immersed in the history of women’s relationship to medicine, was surprised by “just how conscious and insidious it was”, she told the Guardian. “Biological theories about female bodies were used to reinforce and uphold constraining social ideas about women.”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: ‘There is a sustained note of anger running through the book.’ Photograph: Lara Downie 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.”

The thought crossed my mind from time to time, what would I have been told as someone with migraines/scoliosis/anxiety. I can imagine some of it. 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.”Weil Frauen als körperlich und geistig schwach gälten, habe man sie unterworfen und aus Politik und Gesellschaft ausgeschlossen.“ Cleghorn is writing with the goal of improving the lot of women in the present day, and that is an admirable goal! But at least in the earlier chapters of the book I could see a tendency on her part to highlight aspects of history that are more dramatic and emotive than necessarily illuminating for the topic at hand. Did the witchcraft trials (presented here as medieval but actually far more an early modern phenomenon) exert more of a force on how women were treated in medical situations than, say, the development of coverture laws? I don't think so. But the former topic is "sexier" and more dramatic than the latter, and I imagine far better known. Plus, the fact that there were medieval feme sole and that economic opportunities for women may well have constricted in the early modern period would be another point that would jar a bit with that Whiggish trajectory that is one of the book's unquestioned assumptions. Because there are many people out there in the world, even otherwise feminist advocates, who still think that if women are "overweight" according to how western medicine defines overweight, then they SHOULD be put on a diet and they SHOULD be blamed for anything that goes wrong in their bodies and if they DON'T diet, then they have nobody to blame for themselves and don't be surprised or upset or angry if the doctor says something you don't like. It's your own fault for being fat.... as if medical fatophobia isn't an issue of discrimination of socially controlled femininity, like all the other topics raised in this book... Unwell Women: A Journey Through Medicine and Myth in a Man-Made World is a 2021 non-fiction book by Elinor Cleghorn. Cleghorn provides a cultural history of the impacts of misogyny on western medicine and western medical practice. [1] Summary [ edit ]

Cleghorn argues that speaking out about our bodies will help to redress the imbalance in medical culture. To do so “is profoundly feminist. It is generous and courageous to revisit and recall the trauma of pain”. She advocates, then, for countering silencing with a new language of the body, turning ourselves inside out and permitting our physicality to speak rather than letting the pre-existing medical narrative shape how we and others understand our health: “the truth about our illnesses and diseases is in our own bodies. Medicine has to let us translate the languages they are trying to speak.”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. 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." - Shelf Awareness