
Unwell Women
Misdiagnosis and Myth in a Man-Made World
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Narrated by:
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Hanako Footman
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By:
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Elinor Cleghorn
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 10 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.
©2021 Elinor Cleghorn (P)2021 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...




















Critic reviews
“In Unwell Women, the British scholar Elinor Cleghorn makes the insidious impact of gender bias on women’s health starkly and appallingly explicit.... It’s impossible to read Unwell Women without grief, frustration and a growing sense of righteous anger.” (Janice P. Nimura, The New York Times)
“The book is a call to arms for any woman who feels that doctors have not adequately addressed her illness or pain.” (The Washington Post)
“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.” (Scientific American)
“An intriguing exploration of the history of women’s health.... Unwell Women by Elinor Cleghorn shows us that without acknowledgment and understanding of these issues, these ills will continue on into new generations and in untold eras. We owe it to ourselves as a society to understand.” (The Chicago Review of Books)
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Eye-opening history
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I have become increasingly aware of medical gender bias, especially given my own very rare diagnosis, but I didn’t understand the full history behind it. I do now. This book is an excellent explanation of the way society has viewed women and therefore the lack of appropriate medical care. Thank you to the author for her exhaustive research and plain language explanation of why women are seen as less important in medicine and the greater world.
I have a fatal autoimmune disease too
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Great explanation
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I couldn’t have said it better myself
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Thorough History of Women’s Healthcare
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Tough but important book
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At times it was excruciating to hear about the things women have endured throughout history due to racism, sexism, classism, etc. but learning our history is imperative if we want to grow better from it.
**Extra points for the narrator, she had an animated, but a soothing voice that really held my attention the whole time! Thank you Elinor Cleghorn for this important work!
Put On Your Seatbelt
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But be ready to want to scream at how women were and continue to be treated.
Get ready to rage
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Fascinating history on women health
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Validation
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