All in Her Head
The Truth and Lies Early Medicine Taught Us About Women's Bodies and Why It Matters Today
- 320 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
All in Her Head
The Truth and Lies Early Medicine Taught Us About Women's Bodies and Why It Matters Today
About This Book
USA Today Bestseller
A surprising, groundbreaking, and fiercely entertaining medical history that is both a collective narrative of women's bodies and a call to action for a new conversation around women's health.
For as long as medicine has been a practice, women's bodies have been treated like objects to be practiced on: examined and ignored, idealized and sexualized, shamed, subjugated, mutilated, and dismissed. The history of women's healthcare is a story in which women themselves have too often been voicelessâa narrative instead written from the perspective of men who styled themselves as authorities on the female of the species, yet uninformed by women's own voices, thoughts, fears, pain and experiences. The result is a cultural and societal legÂacy that continues to shape the (mis)treatment and care of women.
While the modern age has seen significant advancements in the medical field, the notion that female bodies are flawed inversions of the male ideal lingers onâas do the pervasive societal stigmas and lingering ignorance that shape women's health and relationships with their own bodies.
Memorial Sloan Kettering oncologist and medical historian Dr. Elizabeth Comen draws back the curtain on the collective medical history of women to reintroduce us to our whole bodiesâhow they work, the actual doctors and patients whose perspectives and experiences laid the foundation for today's medical thought, and the many oversights that still remain unaddressed. With a physician's knowledge and empathy, Dr. Comenfollows the road map of the eleven organ systemsto shareunique and untold stories, drawing upon medical texts and journals, interviews with expert physicians, as well as her ownexperience treating thousands of women.
Empowering women to better understand ourselves and advocate for care that prioritizes healthy and joyful livesâ for us and generations to comeâ All in Her Head is written with humor, wisdom, and deep scientific and cultural insight. Eye-opening, sometimes enraging, yet always captivating, this shared memoir of women's medical history is an essential contribution to a holistic understanding and much-needed reclaiming of women's history and bodies.
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Table of contents
- Cover
- Title Page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Introduction
- Chapter 1: Skin, Integumentary: Itâs Whatâs Inside That Counts
- Chapter 2: Bones, Skeletal: Skulls and Whalebones
- Chapter 3: Muscle, Muscular: Whoâs the Weakest of Them All?
- Chapter 4: Blood, Circulatory: Matters of the Heart
- Chapter 5: Breath, Respiratory: Perhaps Women Breathe Different Air
- Chapter 6: Guts, Digestive: The Price of Going (and Not Going) with Your Gut
- Chapter 7: Bladder, Urinary: A Thousand Years of Holding It In
- Chapter 8: Defense, Immune: Self-Sabotage
- Chapter 9: Nerves, Nervous: The âBitches Be Crazyâ School of Medicine
- Chapter 10: Hormones, Endocrine: The Hormone Hangover
- Chapter 11: Sex, Reproductive: The Mother of All Moral Panics
- Conclusion
- Acknowledgments
- Index
- About the Author
- Copyright
- About the Publisher