Name: Unwell Women
Rating: 4 (23 reviews)
ISBN: 9780593182956

Elinor Cleghorn

"A trailblazing conversation-starting history of women's health-from Ancient Greece to hormones and autoimmune diseases-brought together in a fascinating sweeping narrative"--

Misdiagnosis and Myth in a Man-Made World

Unwell Women

Laura Mei

Jemima Scott

Medicine has historically pathologised what it means to be a woman, and what it is to live in a female body, to such a degree that being unwell has been normalised in society and culture, while a woman's rights over her own body remain contested even today

Bekki

In the late Middle Ages, medical men were putting a new theological spin on the ancient teachings. 

All human women were daughters of Eve who had to endure God's punishment by submitting to their husbands and suffering the pain of childbirth. 

At the beginning of City of Ladies, she asked how her trusted God could have made such a horrendous mistake when he allowed the creation of women. 

But the problem, she knew, wasn't God, but mortal men who manipulated Christianity's foundational myths to justify society's subjugation of women.

The Hippocratic Corpus was written at a time when most women had few, if any, civil or human rights. 

In the patriarchal social order of ancient Greece, girls were the properties of their fathers, and women of their husbands. 

They had no ownership over land, property, money or even their own bodies. 

They were seen as weaker, slower, smaller versions of the male human ideal, deficient and defective precisely because of their difference to men. 

But, in their difference, women possessed the most useful and mysterious organ of all: the uterus. 

Since their sole purpose was to bear and raise children, women's health was entirely defined by their uteruses. 

Medical ideas reflected and legitimised society's control over the female body and its precious procreative power.“

Accusing woman of witchcraft was an effective way for social and religious authorities to maintain male dominance and supremacy in their villages and towns. 

And trying and executing women was a measure to cleanse communities of those who were not performing the marital and reproductive duties assigned to them under patriarchy. 

Independent women, solitary women, women past childbearing age – in fact, all women who were not subordinated by marriage and motherhood – were a threat, a hazard, a scourge.

In 1542, under the rule of King Henry VIII, the Witchcraft Act was passed in England, which meant that accused women could now be punished by death. 

Implemented after the English Reformation, which wrested control of the Church of England from the authority of the Pope and the Catholic Church and instituted the monarch as supreme religious leader, the act empowered ecclesiastical courts to exercise responsibility for such ungodly crimes. 

For the Renaissance anatomists, the clitoris confused the physiological differences between men and women that they were so eager to define: men were supposed to be sexual agents, and women the reproductive vessels. 

Imagine how threatened, not to mention envious, men must have been to realise women had a capacity for pleasure they just couldn't get to grips with. 

This was reason enough not only to ignore the clitoris, but to malign and mythologise it as a pathology, a deformity, an aberration.

He saw women as domestic martyrs ordained only for mothering. 

He thought the ‘pain of parturition’ was a God-given agony that helped mothers love their babies, a myth that still exists today.²⁷(...) 

Meigs objected to Simpson’s attempts to popularise obstetric chloroform. 

In a letter to Simpson in 1848, Meigs declared labour pain the ‘most desirable, salutary, and conservative manifestation of life-force’. 

He believed women needed only the ‘cheering counsel’ of male obstetricians to relieve them. 

This, by the way, came from a man who decided women only suffered pain during contractions, and that during an (entirely unrealistic) average labour of four hours women had no more than fifty contractions lasting thirty seconds apiece. 

So, according to Meigs’s calculations, labouring women endured only twenty-five minutes of pain²⁹ – and that was hardly worth expending morality-ruining chloroform on, was it? 

As well as believing labour pain was perfectly tolerable, he also saw women’s expressions of pain as a helpful guide for obstetricians during complicated births. (...)

Many obstetric physicians objected passionately to chloroform. 

Some, like Meigs, argued that labour pain was natural and necessary; others thought chloroform was highly dangerous, and resisted its use on religious grounds. 

Some feared its intoxicating properties would rid women of inhibition and reduce them to sexually depraved beasts. 

The English gynaecologist William Tyler Smith disagreed; he thought pain neutralised the ‘sexual emotion’ of childbirth. 

No decent woman would dream of abandoning her chastity and self-control during such an intimate occasion.³¹

On the cause of epilepsy / Female genital mutilation 

Convulsions and loss of consciousness, mostly affecting women, had been associated for centuries with lunacy, mania and even demonic possession. 

Throughout the nineteenth century, epilepsy was a feminised disease thought to induce an 'epileptic personality' inclined towards moral defects, violence, lewdness, nymphomania and hyposexuality (no interest in sex). 

Epilepsy was deemed incurable, and it was often diagnosed in patients admitted to lunatic asylums across England. 

Many patients at the home were young, middle-class girls with epilepsy.  Brown observed that many of them masturbated, which says far more about the trauma of his treatment and his perverted obsessions than it does about his medical ‘expertise’. 

Nonetheless, he decided masturbation was both a cause and symptom of epilepsy, a disease provoked by the ‘mental emotion’ women were ‘naturally prone’ to.²¹

It was completely logical to Brown that ‘irritating’ that fleshy nub, full of nerves, used up all the energy a woman’s brain needed to function properly. 

Epilepsy was so dreadful and hopeless that clitoridectomy, Brown claimed, was a sufferer’s only hope.

Apart from damaging the digestion, circulation, nervous system, brain, senses and appearance, masturbation, the author claimed, was a symptom of the disease of prostitution. (...)

Brown’s horrific procedure probably seemed like a small sacrifice to readers of this material, terrified that their nervous daughters might be diddling themselves into a life of disrepute. 

Clitoridectomy wouldn’t only improve the lives of sufferers, he insisted, but 'the well-being of the whole human race'.²³

He recommended intervening as early as possible, but drew the line at operating on girls younger than ten.

Even when middle-class wives contracted syphilis or gonorrhoea, their husbands were never suspected of being carriers. 

Refined men were not thought capable of spreading these diseases, and besides, women’s infectious sensibility meant this was easy to explain away. 

If a man’s wife contracted VD because he’d been cavorting where he shouldn’t, some physicians would cover for him by diagnosing something completely different.

Early feminist campaigners rallied against the injustices of punishing women for sexually transmitted diseases. (...) 

In a letter of 1870, Butler wrote: ‘If all the male doctors in the world were to tell me with one voice that the operation is painless, and two or three female prostitutes ... were to whisper in my ear with sobs and shudders ... that “the pain is dreadful” ... 

I should believe the female prostitutes ... because I am a woman, I know my own make.’

1851, Edward Tilt proposed that disorders of the ovaries, which he termed ‘ovaritis’, were caused by having sex too often or not often enough.

He referred to autopsy findings by Dr Oldham – who testified to Brown’s barbarism – which suggested ‘the ovaries of prostitutes are seldom without morbid lesions’.’ Tilt, of course, blamed these ‘lesions’ entirely on women sex workers’ excessive sexual activity. 

It didn’t occur to him that poverty, living conditions, lack of access to medical care, or anything other than female voracity might be the cause.

If ‘ordinary’ women weren’t receiving enough sexual stimuli (from their husbands, naturally), ovaritis could activate a ‘cerebrospinal’ sympathy manifesting in hysteric symptoms. 

In addition to a dearth or surfeit of sex, causes of 'ovarian irritation' included childhood illnesses, horse-back riding and taking train journeys while menstruating. 

Women prone to nervousness were most vulnerable, as were girls with long eyelashes.

But some causes were neither physical nor 'constitutional'. The disease often arose from 'moral causes' or 'excitements' which exaggerated 'the impulse of unsatisfied desires'.⁷ 

He believed women could overexcite their ovaries by looking at books and pictures, having conversations, listening to music and enjoying a social life.

 For unmarried women and girls, the delights of literature could even cause an orgasm. 

If the patient continued to get overexcited by reading, she would irritate her ovaries so much she would inevitably turn hysteric.¹⁰

157 every time I think I found all reasons to hate Freud, he surprises me with another one 

Tuesday morning lectures at the Salpêtrière, his hysteric 'queens',⁴⁴ as they became known, were made to swoon, thrust, pose and contort in front of an audience of men from Paris's scientific, artistic and literary coterie. 

One of the men who witnessed these pathological peep shows was Sigmund Freud

, who was heavily influenced by Charcot's theories in his famous and influential psychoanalytic studies of female hysteria and its roots in the unconscious.

McKenna endorsed ‘artificial feeding’, as he coolly referred to it, as a therapeutic measure to save the lives of suicidal suffragists. 

The practice, he said, was ‘unattended by danger and pain’ and presented no danger to life unless it was met with ‘violent resistance’.³² 

This is chillingly reminiscent of the prominent English gynaecologist Robert Lawson Tait’s infamous assumption that ‘no man can affect a felonious purpose on a woman in possession of her senses without her consent’³³ because, as he reportedly remarked, ‘you cannot thread a moving needle’.³⁴ 

was implying, despicably, that rape was impossible if women submitted, and that if a woman claimed she was raped, she must have submitted.

The violation, the assault, is not in the action, but in the resistance to it.

McKenna, similarly, was suggesting that women’s refusal to submit to a horrific abuse of their bodies was the cause of their suffering. 

This assessment is particularly sickening, because some suffrage prisoners were force-fed through the rectum and vagina.³⁵

For centuries, many medical ‘cures’ for women’s apparent deviancy and defiance had been punishments masquerading as therapies.

Force-feeding was not a health-preservation measure; it was an unremittingly cruel tactic to break women’s resolve, to weaken their will, to make them submit. 

232 men always finding a way to blame women is astonishing 

And since they didn't understand what was actually happening during 'the change of life', they tended to characterise the menopause according to symptoms they observed in older women patients. 

(...) almost every conceivable physical and mental disturbance affecting older women had come to be associated with the diminishing of their fertility. (...) As with menstruation, gynaecologists had based their pathological opinions on the experiences of the few women who had a hard time. 

In its ignorance, medicine had made women fearful of the menopause by dramatising it as 'perilous' and 'fraught'. 

'Upon this exceptional experience,' wrote Currier, 'the doctrine of the dangerous and serious character of menopause has been built up.'³³ Perceptions of whether a woman could get through 'the change' with ease often depended on what kind of woman she was, 

how she had lived and how faithfully she had obeyed her feminine duties. (..)"

235 our poor mothers and grandmothers and all the strong women before them going through this without medical knowledge available 

Menopause, today, is under-researched, misunderstood and still shrouded in myths and misconceptions. 

(...) It is a biological transition that will be experienced 

by most people who have ovaries, usually between the ages of forty-five and fifty-five.

And yet, maddeningly, medicine still doesn’t have enough knowledge about the diverse experiences of menopause to support women through it properly.

Pernicious perceptions of ageing women, and hackneyed stereotypes about ‘the change’ making women mad, sad and even dangerous, are woven into the culture of stigmatisation and trivialisation that still circulates around menopause. (..)

And, frustratingly, menopause is usually only diagnosed after menstruation has stopped for more than twelve months. 

This means that the symptoms of perimenopause, which can happen up to ten years before periods end, are frequently misdiagnosed – especially as depression and anxiety.³⁸

Menopause marks the beginning of a liberatory, transformative and empowering stage of life. 

Myths about the depletion of women's worth that have shrouded menopause for too long should now be consigned to history.

Breaking down stigma, shifting perceptions and allaying anxieties at a medical level need to go hand in hand with a cultural celebration of what it means to be unbound by reproductive biology.

The sense of fear that is still evoked by the idea of the menopause was built up over centuries.

And hysterectomy still carries enormous risks to a woman's health and quality of life. It can lead to bladder and bowel problems and vaginal prolapse. 

Removing the uterus places extra strain on the pelvis, causing chronic pain and mobility problems. 

And it can reduce libido and destroy 'sexual sensation'. 

But women are routinely not informed about these very serious complications. 

Owing to their ‘natural dislike of . . . medical examination’ by men, many patients refused to seek treatment until it was too late."

 If they could consult with a woman doctor, their ‘terror’ would be ‘allayed’, and their lives saved. 

Women were suffering because of lack of knowledge, research and care, and also because the doctor-patient dynamic was unjustly rigged against them. She urged women doctors to use their intuition, self-sacrifice, reasoning and sympathy in the ‘service of humanity.

(...)Within two years, a property on Fitzjohn's Avenue in north London was converted into a thirty-bed hospital, directed by Hurdon and staffed entirely by women. 

It was supported by private donations, public organisations including the Medical Research Council, and the British Empire Cancer Campaign, which provided the radium.³¹ The treatment was expensive, but beds were reserved for public patients. 

For women patients, the option to be treated with radium therapy rather than surgical butchery, by women who understood and respected their bodies, was not only preferable but life-saving.

 Women sought help before their diseases became more destructive because they knew they could consult with, and be treated by, a woman. 

The shame and humiliation instilled in them about their most intimate body parts was allayed.

 By 1937, nearly 1,000 women had been treated for uterine cancer at the hospital. The five-year survival rate for 'early operable cases' was 83 per cent – the second highest, at the time, of all cancer clinics worldwide.³² 

By 1967, when the Marie Curie Hospital was transferred into the Mount Vernon Hospital in north-west London, it had treated 13,802 cases of cancer, mostly of the cervix, uterus and breast, but also of the ovary, vulva, vagina and rectum.³³ 

Those incredible women turned the germ of an idea into Britain's first ever cancer clinic led by women, for women.

At the annual meeting of the British Medical Association in 1924, Sanderson Clow revealed that only 3 per cent of the women she interviewed experienced ‘disabling’ period pain. 

Most discomfort could be relieved with exercise, fresh air, hot baths and improved hygiene. 

She firmly disagreed that uterine spasms and mystical causes like ‘underdeveloped genital organs’ were as common as some male gynaecologists claimed. What women needed was accurate, unbiased information.

 They also urgently needed private lavatories in their schools, factories and offices so they could wash, change their sanitary towels and dispose of used ones discretely. 

After her paper, one male physician confessed he had been taught that menstruating women were incapable of doing anything. 

It was absolutely unheard of to suggest one took a bath. 

His mind was blown by a patient who kept up her active regime of cycling during her periods.

 The panel president revealed that he’d recently been ‘asked to believe that two-thirds of all women had their pelvic organs misplaced and suffered dysmenorrhea as a result’. 

Like many gynaecologists and physicians at the time, Novak decided the ‘internal vaginal tampon’ was not suitable for unmarried girls because it would cause pain and injure the hymen. 

Married women with loose ‘vaginal canals’ would probably find the tampon fell out. 

Besides the danger of cervical infection Novak associated with ‘plugging’, the idea of women touching their own vaginas was most indecorous. 

Early evening on 27 April, fourteen-year-old Miss H. was walking along London's Whitehall when a guardsman from a barracks on Horse Guards Parade asked if she wanted to see a horse with a green tail. Once she was lured into the stable, Miss H. was violently raped multiple times by five guardsmen. 

She managed to escape and find a policeman, who took her to Canon Row police station where she was examined by a woman officer. 

Her internal injuries were horrific. No Three perpetrators were identified, and rape committal proceedings began in May. 

She saw a gynaecologist at St Thomas’ Hospital who refused to interfere 

because she had been impregnated by guardsmen and might be carrying ‘the future Prime Minister of England’.

Bourne agreed to perform the procedure for no fee, and told Malleson that afterwards he would turn himself in. 

On 14 June Bourne told Chief Inspector Walter Bridger, 

‘I have emptied the uterus and I want you to arrest me.’

Bourne’s trial began on 18 July at the Central Criminal Court. 

He was charged with ‘unlawfully procuring the abortion of a girl’ under the Offences against the Person Act. 

Miss H. had been subjected to an unimaginably traumatic attack. 

But she was diagnosed as ‘normal’ and ‘healthy’. The injuries she sustained would not have made childbirth difficult, the court heard.

Bourne had to convince the jury that he had upheld his duty to preserve Miss H.’s health. 

He argued that the ‘circumstances of the conception’ implanted ‘seeds of terror’ in her mind.

 Even though the pregnancy wouldn’t technically endanger her life, it would doubtless condemn her to a life of incurable ‘nervous, psychoneurotic... and secondary physical illnesses’. (...) 

Parliament had recently raised the age of consent from an alarming twelve to sixteen. 

Her pelvic bones were not fully developed. It was not only illegal but medically 'undesirable' for her to bear a child.

Common sense must prevail when considering the mental anguish that a girl of such 'tender years' would suffer by being forced to 'carry in her body' the consequences of this terrible rape. (...) 

The jury adjourned for forty minutes. Bourne was found not guilty.¹⁶

Bourne's acquittal was an important step on the long road towards reproductive justice. But it was a tentative one. Responses to the case revealed how abortion, in the eyes of the law and the medical profession, was still by no means a woman's right.  (...). 

If a girl or woman felt supported enough to report her assault, judgements about her social status, morality and sexuality clouded whether she was believed; 'abortion cannot be justified merely on the strength of an allegation that pregnancy is due to rape,' the report stated.

 Even if she was underage, the committee didn't think she was automatically exempt from these requirements.

288 some men should really start their life off in prison and work their way out 

Nazi eugenics and their American inspiration

 The Nazi eugenics programme was the logical conclusion of regarding women as nothing more than reproductive material. (...) 

But abuses of this kind were not confined to the Nazi regime. 

The Nazi 1933 law was heavily inspired by the compulsory sterilisation law modelled for the US in 1922 by Harry H. Laughlin, superintendent of the Eugenics Record Office, the epicentre of eugenic propaganda.

Couched as a means of promoting 'the health of the individual and the welfare of society', 

Laughlin's law was a racist and ableist plan to weed out 'undesirable' traits that didn't fit the vision of a strong, white America.

Any 'defective' person afflicted with 'hereditary forms of insanity', namely idiocy, imbecility, feeble-mindedness or epilepsy' could be forced to undergo a salpingectomy (the surgical removal of one or both of the fallopian tubes) or a vasectomy. Vulnerable and disenfranchised women were the targets of these procedures.

'Sexual looseness' and promiscuity were interpreted as symptoms of a chillingly broad category of 'feeble-mindedness'. 

This meant young women who had suffered sexual violence risked having their fertility stolen because they were seen as 'manifestly unfit' to become mothers.

California, which had the highest rates of compulsory sterilisation in the US, performed the majority of procedures on young women 'diagnosed' as 'dependant, delinquent and mentally deficient'.

 (...)  After the Depression, eugenic lawmakers framed sterilisation as a solution for the state's economic burdens. 

Jada

lala

The motivation that lays before reading this book is I was sick this month and had to go on multiple trips to the doctor. I slightly remember a point I read from a book (I think it was Mother of Invention), on how it's more difficult for women to go to seek medical help as their complaints usually are registered as hysteria or mental health problems. My expectation on reading this book is to be able to uncover the bias on the healthcare system, and this book delivered. This books starts from the ancient world to the present, starting from how women are only regarded for their reproductive organs and their subsequent health problems arises from their reproductive organs. What I admire from this book is that Cleghorn's tries to include as many women's activists efforts to improve healthcare system for women. In addition, Cleghorn's approach is intersectional, she manages to cover the motivation behind some movement, such as Sanger's eugenics approach in her effort on making birth control available for women. Being an unwell woman herself, the last chapter is devoted to her journey to getting a lupus diagnosis. This book is a well-researched and well-written book. Although a thought pops up in my head: Cleghorn focuses on the US and the UK, what about other countries, especially Asia? Are there any books on similar topic specifically on healthcare system in Asia, or one that is focuses on more racially diverse women? I know that Cleghorn may not cover all of it, I was just wondering.

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. Elinor Cleghorn became an unwell woman ten years ago. She was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease after a long period of being told her symptoms were anything from psychosomatic to a possible pregnancy. As Elinor learned to live with her unpredictable disease she turned to history for answers, and found an enraging legacy of suffering, mystification, and misdiagnosis. In Unwell Women, Elinor Cleghorn traces the almost unbelievable history of how medicine has failed women by treating their bodies as alien and other, often to perilous effect. The result is an authoritative and groundbreaking exploration of the relationship between women and medical practice, from the "wandering womb" of Ancient Greece to the rise of witch trials across Europe, and from the dawn of hysteria as a catchall for difficult-to-diagnose disorders to the first forays into autoimmunity and the shifting understanding of hormones, menstruation, menopause, and conditions like endometriosis. Packed with character studies and case histories of women who have suffered, challenged, and rewritten medical orthodoxy—and the men who controlled their fate—this is a revolutionary examination of the relationship between women, illness, and medicine. With these case histories, Elinor pays homage to the women who suffered so strides could be made, and shows how being unwell has become normalized in society and culture, where women have long been distrusted as reliable narrators of their own bodies and pain. But the time for real change is long overdue: answers reside in the body, in the testimonies of unwell women—and their lives depend on medicine learning to listen.

Heavy trigger warning. DNF purely because the realities made me too sick to the stomach to bear.

It is well-written and seems well-researched; unfortunately I already knew a lot of the history so I didn’t have the sensation of revelation to soften the stark horror of the details, and so I couldn’t finish it properly.

I recognise my privilege of being able to turn away. I also recognise that I am honouring my own needs as part of the living legacy of unwell women.

I do recommend it as a history, it is (or seems, as far as I managed) concise and thorough. And I appreciate that it is out in the world, available to inform.

Riley

Heavy trigger warning. DNF purely because the realities made me too sick to the stomach to bear.

It is well-written and seems well-researched; unfortunately I already knew a lot of the history so I didn’t have the sensation of revelation to soften the stark horror of the details, and so I couldn’t finish it properly.

I recognise my privilege of being able to turn away. I also recognise that I am honouring my own needs as part of the living legacy of unwell women.

I do recommend it as a history, it is (or seems, as far as I managed) concise and thorough. And I appreciate that it is out in the world, available to inform.

'We are taught that medicine is the art of solving our body's mysteries. And as a science, we expect medicine to uphold the principles of evidence and impartiality. We want our doctors to listen to us and care for us as people, but we also need their assessments of our pain and fevers, aches and exhaustion to be free of any prejudice about who we are, our gender, or the colour of our skin. But medicine carries the burden of its own troubling history. The history of medicine, of illness, is a history of people, of their bodies and their lives, not just physicians, surgeons, clinicians and researchers. And medical progress has always reflected the realities of a changing world, and the meanings of being human.' In Unwell Women Elinor Cleghorn unpacks the roots of the perpetual misunderstanding, mystification and misdiagnosis of women's bodies, and traces the journey from the 'wandering womb' of ancient Greece, the rise of witch trials in Medieval Europe, through the dawn of Hysteria, to modern day understandings of autoimmune diseases, the menopause and conditions like endometriosis. Packed with character studies of women who have suffered, challenged and rewritten medical orthodoxy - and drawing on her own experience of un-diagnosed Lupus disease - this is a ground-breaking and timely exposé of the medical world and woman's place within it.

A History of Medicine in a Man-Made World

jenn kause

As someone with a chronic illness, I was always curious about the history not only of my own disease but just how women were so often (and still today) disregarded with their health.

A lot of this book made me mad; certainly not the authors fault but ultimately the decisions of the past are just heart wrenching, terrible, and completely evil. Some were misguided, some didn’t have the technology, but a lot of them just didn’t care and were rooted in such strong misogyny. 

I loved the history aspect to this book and understanding the struggles it’s taken to get to where we are now. We have a LONG way to go, but one thing I get from this book is to always stand up for myself. A lot of these women in the past didn’t have anyone, and the least I can do for them and myself is fight.

Josefina

this was a very insightful and complete read that basically confirmed that people in female bodies just have never been taken seriously and that our pain is always diminished *to this day*

Rachel

Unwell Women tells the history of women's health and dives deep into the ridiculous crap women had to put up with for way too long and still have to battle to an extent today. Highly recommended, as someone with a chronic illness the last few chapters were a real eye-opener about the problems I had experienced trying to get a diagnosis and how in the future I need to advocate for my own health.

'Seamlessly melding scholarship with passion, Unwell Women is the definition of unputdownable' Telegraph'A richly detailed, wide-ranging and enraging history... Unwell Women is not just a compelling investigation, but an essential one' Observer'A passionate and indignant history' The Times'A searing, brilliant investigation, an intricate and urgent book on how women's health has constantly been misunderstood and miscast throughout history' Kate Williams'One of the most important books of our generation' Fern Riddell'UNWELL WOMEN is a powerful and fascinating book that takes an unsparing look at how women's bodies have been misunderstood and misdiagnosed for centuries.' Lindsey Fitzharris'We are taught that medicine is the art of solving our body's mysteries. And as a science, we expect medicine to uphold the principles of evidence and impartiality. We want our doctors to listen to us and care for us as people, but we also need their assessments of our pain and fevers, aches and exhaustion to be free of any prejudice about who we are, our gender, or the colour of our skin. But medicine carries the burden of its own troubling history. The history of medicine, of illness, is a history of people, of their bodies and their lives, not just physicians, surgeons, clinicians and researchers. And medical progress has always reflected the realities of a changing world, and the meanings of being human.'In Unwell Women Elinor Cleghorn unpacks the roots of the perpetual misunderstanding, mystification and misdiagnosis of women's bodies, and traces the journey from the 'wandering womb' of ancient Greece, the rise of witch trials in Medieval Europe, through the dawn of Hysteria, to modern day understandings of autoimmune diseases, the menopause and conditions like endometriosis. Packed with character studies of women who have suffered, challenged and rewritten medical orthodoxy - and drawing on her own experience of un-diagnosed Lupus disease - this is a ground-breaking and timely expose of the medical world and woman's place within it.

Unwell Women Misdiagnosis and Myth in a Man-Made World

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