Hippocrates, the founder of modern medicine, believed that women were controlled by their uterus. The father of modern gynecology, James Marion Sims, experimented with enslaved black women without anesthesia in the mid-19th century and believed they felt less pain than white women. (His statue stood in New York’s Central Park for more than a century until it was removed in 2018.) Doctors claimed that women’s suffrage would harm the fragile bodies and diminished minds of women. Such examples cast a hideous shadow over “First, do no harm”.
The history of medicine is as social and cultural as it is scientific, and male dominance is firmly anchored in its foundations. But even the author Elinor Cleghorn, who last year dealt with the history of women’s relationships with medicine, was surprised “how deliberate and insidious it was,” she says. “Biological theories about female bodies have been used to strengthen and perpetuate restrictive societal ideas about women.”
Doctors could tell me what was happening in my body, but they couldn’t tell why I got systemic lupus or why I am more prone to it as a woman
Cleghorn’s new book, Unwell Women, lists a litany of ways in which women’s minds and bodies have been misunderstood and misdiagnosed throughout history. From the wandering uterus of ancient Greece (the idea that a displaced uterus caused a lot of women’s diseases) and the witch trials of medieval Europe, to the onset of hysteria to modern myths about menstruation, she lays out the incredible and sometimes terrible treatment of women for thousands of years in the name of medicine.
A former Oxford researcher with a background in feminist culture and history, Cleghorn meticulously constructs an often arousing framework to show how and why the patriarchal medical world has been so harmful to women, especially underserved and colored women. And Unwell Women shows how the legacy of disenfranchisement and discrimination continues today, resulting in women being underrepresented in medical studies, women’s pain being psychological or emotional, and an inadequate, sometimes hostile system that makes women more likely to use antidepressants offers prevails and sedatives than the referral for further diagnosis and more targeted care.
Cleghorn was inspired to write the book after years of being discharged from doctors before she was finally diagnosed with systemic lupus, a difficult-to-diagnose disease that is nine times more common in women than men. (Pop star Selena Gomez has spoken openly about her struggles with the complex, incurable disease.)
“I tried to understand why none of my doctors could really explain much about it. They could tell me what was happening in my body, but they couldn’t tell why I got it or why I am more prone to it as a woman. I’ve started digging through the history of medicine and looking through case studies to women who really feel like me. ”(Cleghorn began writing the book during the lockdown, relying on online medical archives and the extensive ones Wellcome Library digital collections. “Fortunately for me, the men who wrote about women’s bodies love to write a lot about them,” she chuckles.)
There is a quiet radicalism in using women’s knowledge of themselves to transform the culture of medical inequality
These “related women” brought Cleghorn to learn about other chronic, incurable diseases that affect more women than men. One of these diseases is endometriosis, which affects an estimated one in ten women worldwide and which takes an average of seven to nine years to diagnose. Although it was named in the 1920s, all of its diagnostic secrets remain to this day, notes Cleghorn. “Endometriosis was described by a doctor in the 1920s as the enigma of etiology, and we still don’t know what causes it. Tracking this lack of progress over 100 years has been a real example of how little progress we have made. I wanted to go back and find out why these conditions are still surrounded by so many question marks and where these gaps, injustices and discrimination actually come from. “
Today’s booming wellness industry, which, according to Cleghorn, benefits most from women and whose popularity is related to the prevalence of such confusing diseases, has fallen into the breach. “The industry knows that women with these health problems are being let down by traditional medicine, so it adapts to being caring, listening, and seeing you as an individual. A lot of language in the wellness industry strikes me as frightening the 19th century with its conditions and syndromes. “
Throughout the book, Cleghorn highlights the increasing effects of race, access, and privilege on gender. “In the UK, we have faced our health failures in black, Asian and ethnically diverse women, who have far greater health disparities than white women, especially in reproductive health,” she notes. But she is dismayed by the “very reassuring” response from the British government. “It’s annoying and shocking that there is no more money, strategy, funding, research, and urgent prioritization of issues like the maternal mortality of black women.”
It is probably the first time in history that women’s subjective experiences and voices are used. This is an important start because women are not a monolith
Parallel to this story of frustrations and injustices, there is an empowering alternate story of resistance and beneficial contributions from women. She quotes the pioneering American doctor Mary Putnam Jacobi, who in the 1870s denied the idea that women need rest during menstruation. “At that time, men doctors only used anecdotes and guesses, but Putnam Jacobi used the subjective knowledge of women to substantiate them. There is a quiet radicalism in using women’s knowledge of themselves to change the culture of medical inequality. “
Cleghorn relies on this with a final chapter entitled Believe Us. For a long time women were considered to be unreliable narrators of their own bodies. Although modern medicine today enables women to educate themselves about their bodies (a luxury that has been banned for centuries) and offers women the opportunity to enter the medical community, Cleghorn believes that understanding women’s health continues to be a problem remains.
But getting started with a solution is easy, she says. “It’s really important to prioritize women’s voices. I don’t think all of this is a grand patriarchal conspiracy – implicit, unconscious bias is so ingrained, even in the very establishment of doctor-patient interaction. When I have the opportunity to speak freely without feeling rushed or judged, I feel better cared for. “
The UK government’s recent women’s health strategy, in which it has sought evidence from women about their treatment by the health system, is groundbreaking, she notes. “It is probably the first time in history that the subjective experiences and voices of women are used. This is an important start because women are not a monolith. “
Cleghorn hopes her book will help anyone who has had a difficult or painful health experience “feel validated and valued because it can be so isolating, so demoralizing, and dehumanizing. But having a disease also makes sense insofar as you are part of that production of very important knowledge. I hope readers can relate to this story, which we hope we can change now. ”- Wächter
Unwell Women, by Elinor Cleghorn, is published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson
source https://dailyhealthynews.ca/first-do-no-harm-medicines-unbelievable-sometimes-horrific-treatment-of-women/
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