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A review by cat_rector
Unwell Women: A Journey Through Medicine and Myth in a Man-Made World by Elinor Cleghorn
5.0
This book isn't a five-star because it's an easy read. No, it's a five-star because it's a collection of horrors that everyone should understand.
I picked this up as research for a book I'm working on. I wanted to better understand the connection between women and medicine before the invention of western doctors. I got that, but I got more than I bargained for. I got a long history of men making choices for women about their bodies that resulted in illness and death. I read about religious shame and willful misunderstanding about women's bodies. And now I look at mine and understand so much about myself, and why things are.
I want this book to be fiction, because if it were, healthcare would be more equitable. If it were, I wouldn't have a list of women in my head who were underserved by doctors. There are women in my life who are dead because their illness wasn't detected early enough, because their pain was brushed off, who are dead because we invented entire diagnoses to explain for centuries why they must be imagining it.
I want this to be fiction. I want someone to rewrite our history so that our bodies are better known. So that the real diseases that currently plague bodies born female were curable, treatable, understood. So that we aren't told it's all in our heads, even today. So that I don't spend 34 years learning and unlearning shame.
I picked this up as research for a book I'm working on. I wanted to better understand the connection between women and medicine before the invention of western doctors. I got that, but I got more than I bargained for. I got a long history of men making choices for women about their bodies that resulted in illness and death. I read about religious shame and willful misunderstanding about women's bodies. And now I look at mine and understand so much about myself, and why things are.
I want this book to be fiction, because if it were, healthcare would be more equitable. If it were, I wouldn't have a list of women in my head who were underserved by doctors. There are women in my life who are dead because their illness wasn't detected early enough, because their pain was brushed off, who are dead because we invented entire diagnoses to explain for centuries why they must be imagining it.
I want this to be fiction. I want someone to rewrite our history so that our bodies are better known. So that the real diseases that currently plague bodies born female were curable, treatable, understood. So that we aren't told it's all in our heads, even today. So that I don't spend 34 years learning and unlearning shame.