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A review by carriekellenberger
For Her Own Good: Two Centuries of the Experts Advice to Women by Deirdre English, Barbara Ehrenreich
5.0
An eye-opening and very informative account of how women have been treated over the past two centuries in the medical industry. Ehrenreich takes us through the history of the establishment of the medical industry, how to raise children, how feminism changed and adapted over the centuries, and up to modern society and how women are viewed.
There are sections on female health, the 'rise of sick and languishing women', how they were treated, the creation of home economics and its importance, how to rear children and suggestions suggestions on how to be the perfect wife, and more. All of it is annotated and researched with a giant footnote section in the end to refer to.
For Her Own Good: Two Centuries of Experts' Advice to Women demonstrates how attitudes towards women in the health industry started and how these attitudes have remained. These biases are still well and thriving in the medical industry today.
From looking at how the medical establishment was created (upper class white men who had money to go to university, but did not study anatomy or how to treat illnesses) to how midwives were vilified, removed, and replaced by men with no knowledge of female anatomy to male doctors dismissing women as hysterical and 'doctors' who specialized in the 'psychologically abnormal' experience of being a woman - this book will hit a lot of nerves!
For a book that was first published in 1978, this book has aged fairly well. Very informative and a great read.
Best Takeaway Fact
"With a patriarchal self-confidence that had almost no further need of instruments, techniques, medications, Osler wrote:
If a poor lass, paralyzed apparently, helpless, bed-ridden for years, comes to me, having worn out in mind, body, and estate a devoted family; if she in a few weeks or less by faith in me, and faith alone, takes up her bed and walks, the saints of old could not have done more... ~Sir William Osler
Now at last the medical profession had arrived at a method of faith-healing potent enough to compare with women's traditional healing - but one which was decisively masculine. It did not require a nurturant attitude, nor long hours by the patient's bedside. In fact, with the new style of healing, the less time a doctor spends with a patient, and the fewer questions he permits, the greater his powers would seem to be."
There are sections on female health, the 'rise of sick and languishing women', how they were treated, the creation of home economics and its importance, how to rear children and suggestions suggestions on how to be the perfect wife, and more. All of it is annotated and researched with a giant footnote section in the end to refer to.
For Her Own Good: Two Centuries of Experts' Advice to Women demonstrates how attitudes towards women in the health industry started and how these attitudes have remained. These biases are still well and thriving in the medical industry today.
From looking at how the medical establishment was created (upper class white men who had money to go to university, but did not study anatomy or how to treat illnesses) to how midwives were vilified, removed, and replaced by men with no knowledge of female anatomy to male doctors dismissing women as hysterical and 'doctors' who specialized in the 'psychologically abnormal' experience of being a woman - this book will hit a lot of nerves!
For a book that was first published in 1978, this book has aged fairly well. Very informative and a great read.
Best Takeaway Fact
"With a patriarchal self-confidence that had almost no further need of instruments, techniques, medications, Osler wrote:
If a poor lass, paralyzed apparently, helpless, bed-ridden for years, comes to me, having worn out in mind, body, and estate a devoted family; if she in a few weeks or less by faith in me, and faith alone, takes up her bed and walks, the saints of old could not have done more... ~Sir William Osler
Now at last the medical profession had arrived at a method of faith-healing potent enough to compare with women's traditional healing - but one which was decisively masculine. It did not require a nurturant attitude, nor long hours by the patient's bedside. In fact, with the new style of healing, the less time a doctor spends with a patient, and the fewer questions he permits, the greater his powers would seem to be."