The overall purpose of this book can be summarised by the title of the final chapter conclusion, which is: Believe Us. If you have a chronic illness, know someone with a chronic illness or you are a woman who has ever had to deal with a medical professional's disinterest then this book is for you. It took my mum over 7 years to be diagnosed correctly and even now she continues to face doubt and flippancy when seeking medical treatment. It didn't take me quite as long to get diagnosed with chronic pain but I have definitely bought into the culture of minimising the pain and even sometimes being embarrassed about seeking treatment through fear of not being believed. About half of the women I know have similar experiences and those are just the ones I've spoken to about it. I'm almost tempted to buy bulk copies of this book and drop them in my doctor's waiting room like a nerdy vigilante. The thought crossed my mind from time to time, what would I have been told as someone with migraines/scoliosis/anxiety. I can imagine some of it. Okay, raise your hand if you’ve ever had your symptoms totally dismissed by a doctor! . . . Well, Elinor Cleghorn’s eye-opening book takes a deep dive into the history of how the medical system has failed women (all the way from Ancient Greece to modern day problems like getting Endometriosis diagnosed) and how women are often seen as unreliable sources for what they’re feeling in their own bodies.” At once grand in scope and deeply personal,Unwell Womenis a powerful and important exploration of the history of Western medicine. Elinor Cleghorn lays bare centuries of unnecessary suffering in this meticulously researched, scorching indictment of how male-focused medicine has failed women – and shows us how far we still have to go.”

Every argument she made up to the point where I DNF'd was inflammatory, poorly researched or the takeaway was often not only far-fetched, but seriously missing the point. The history of medicine is every bit as social and cultural as it is scientific, and male dominance is cemented in its foundations. But even the author Elinor Cleghorn, who spent the past year immersed in the history of women’s relationship to medicine, was surprised by “just how conscious and insidious it was”, she told the Guardian. “Biological theories about female bodies were used to reinforce and uphold constraining social ideas about women.” A new book by British historian Elinor Cleghorn that’s equal parts fascinating and infuriating…. ‘The lives of unwell women depend on medicine learning to listen,’ Cleghorn concludes. And reading this immaculately researched and written book is an excellent place to start.”Researcher Cleghorn provides an essential history of misogyny in health care…. This clear-eyed assessment is both a catalog of how medicine has been complicit in female oppression and a call to action for drastic reform.”

The author ascribes the "insistence on often completely unnecessary surgery" [hysterectomy] to the fact that US regulations require Gyn residents "to perform a minimum of 70 hysterectomies during their residencies." [This was not the case when I completed residency in 1983.] The current regulation requires residents to perform 70 "minimally invasive" hysterectomies, but even that would only account for an increase in unnecessary procedures DURING residency, not after completing training. IMHO the primary reason why many private practice US Gyns perform unnecessary hysterectomies is FINANCIAL: they are paid more to do surgery! Private practice insurance reimbursement is far lower for less invasive treatments and procedures, many of which require much more of the physician's time in clinic. Far easier and more lucrative to perform the definitive procedure. [And FYI, Gyns employed by HMO's like Kaiser Permanente receive fixed salaries and are NOT reimbursed more to perform surgery; they only schedule surgeries that they feel are truly medically indicated.] Nevertheless, Cleghorn is undoubtedly right that “the cultural geography of women’s chronic ill-health is shifting”, and her own clear account contributes to this change in a significant way. She is not wrong when she writes that “we are the most reliable narrators of what is happening in our own bodies”. Still, is it possible to be wholly reliable in a language that is not yet fully one’s own? Women may struggle to narrate what is happening to their bodies without a systematic structure in place through which to receive and share this knowledge. Sometimes, simple speech is not as easy as it seems. But we must hope for the shift that Cleghorn sees to continue, one which her own book makes steady steps towards. This is a statement that every single health professional should carry and keep with them, on every single shift at the doctor's surgery, or at the hospital. Health professionals should also be reminded to read the patients notes, as for some reason, communication within parts of the health service, is entirely non existent. We should not not have to constantly keep explaining ourselves to the same person, only to be sent away with yet more paracetamol. This book really, really made my blood boil, and although women's health experiences to do with pain have improved from many years ago, even as of now, it is still heavily stigmatized, and laden with the pathetic line 'Are you sure you're not imagining it?'. Unwell Women: A Journey Through Medicine and Myth in a Man-Made World by Elinor Cleghorn is a revised history spanning from the ancient Greeks to the present day, one which places women at the centre of medical discovery, knowledge, and practises. In the introduction, Cleghorn declares that medicine is ‘androcentric’: it assumes male bodies are the standard by which to measure all against and that medicine holds male-dominated forms of knowledge in the highest regard. The harrowing tale of Anne Greene distils for us the key conflict Cleghorn highlights in her book: women’s lived experience of their bodies versus men’s learned mastery over them. As Cleghorn writes: ‘Between the anatomists, the midwife, and Reade’s [the owner’s] domestic staff, different forms of knowledge about the female body tussled for legitimacy during Anne’s trial’ (72). Cleghorn’s overarching aim, illustrated by Anne’s tribulations and throughout, is to unearth women’s experience about their bodies as well as to educate readers about the predominantly female activists, doctors, and everyday human beings who fought and continue to fight misogyny, racism, and other oppressions at play within conventional medicine. As such, she focuses mainly on UK-based histories, and briefly touches on issues in western Europe and North America. Running parallel to this history of frustrations and injustices is an empowering alternative history of the resistances and beneficial contributions of women. She cites the pioneering American physician Mary Putnam Jacobi, who in the 1870s disputed the idea that women required rest during menstruation. “Male physicians at the time were using just anecdotes and conjecture, but Putnam Jacobi employed subjective knowledge from women to soundly disprove them. There’s a quiet radicalism in using women’s knowledge about themselves to change the culture of medical inequality.”UNWELL WOMEN is a powerful and fascinating book t hat takes an unsparing look at how women's bodies have been misunderstood and misdiagnosed for centuries. ' Lindsey Fitzharris