Wendy Mitchinson

In this energetic new study, Wendy Mitchinson traces medical perspectives on the treatment of women in Canada in the first half of the twentieth century. It is based on in-depth research in a variety of archival sources, including Canadian medical journals, textbooks used in many of Canada’s medical faculties, popular health literature, patient case records, and hospital annual reports, as well as interviews with women who lived during the period. Each chapter examines events throughout a woman’s life cycle – puberty, menstruation, sexuality, marriage and motherhood – and the health problems connected to them – infertility, birth control and abortion, gynaecology, cancer, nervous disorders, and menopause. Mitchinson provides a sensitive understanding of the physician/patient relationship, the unease of many doctors about the bodies of their female patients, as well as overriding concerns about the relationship between female and male bodies. Throughout the book, Mitchinson takes care to examine the roles and agency of both patients and practitioners as diverse individuals.

Medical Views of Women, 1900-1950

Body Failure

Deborah McPhail

Jenny Ellison

Medical professionals, social policy makers, and the media have all declared that Canada is in the grip of an obesity epidemic. Conceptualizing obesity as a biological condition, these experts insist that it needs to be “prevented” and “managed.” Obesity in Canada takes a broader, critical perspective of our supposed epidemic. Examining obesity in its cultural and historical context, the book’s contributors ask how we measure health and wellness, where our attitudes to obesity develop from, and what the consequences are of naming and targeting as “obese” those whose body weights do not match our expectations. A broad survey of the issues surrounding the obesity panic in Canada, it is the first collection of fat studies and critical obesity studies from a distinctly Canadian perspective.

Critical Perspectives

Obesity in Canada

Obesity in Canada takes a broader, critical perspective of our supposed obesity epidemic

In documenting the changing nature of interventional medicine, Mitchinson considers the medical treatment of women within the context of what was available to physicians at the time.

Wendy Mitchinson

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