Book Review: Unwell Women
To paraphrase the great Maya Angelou: when a woman tells you she is in pain, believe her the first time
If I had to summarise this book in a word, it would be: Harrowing. From start to finish, absolutely harrowing. Initially, it was funny, but after a while…. Reducing women’s pain to hysteria or wondering wombs? Not so funny anymore. In fact, many parts made me cringe – In the same way I guess a man would when he sees someone being kicked in the balls because this book was a sucker punch to the ovaries – with a wrecking ball. Maybe you think I’m being dramatic? Funny, that’s what hundreds of thousands of doctors have probably considered or said to women over millennia. So that’s the point.
I knew the history of women’s health was bad and sometimes downright laughable – but wasn’t all of medical history – regardless of gender? Sure it was – the humours of the body and all of that is beyond ridiculous when you think of all the advances science and medicine have made over the past 200-300 years. However, encouraging women to have more sex and get pregnant more because her womb has wondered away from its rightful place (right up until the 1800’s) is beyond stupid. So stupid because these ideals were based on what a couple of Greek philosophers and doctors theorised THOUSANDS OF YEARS AGO. As though pregnancy doesn’t come with its own set of complications. Not to mention, forced hysterectomies, the racist idea that black women do not feel pain, eugenics and the fact that the early version of the Pill literally caused cancer and gave birth defects to children. And this was right up until the 1970’s. Within living memory!
This book is well worth the read, the amount of research, conducted by Dr. Elinor Cleghorn, that went into this book is astounding. The myths and mysticism around women’s health still resounds today, which is abhorrent. Sure, no one is accusing us of witchcraft anymore, but our medicine might as well be. The tide is turning, slowly but surely, more and more women are coming forward with stories of how their pain has been dismissed as psychosomatic or to do with their wombs. This book will make you angry, especially if you’re a woman and furious if you’re an unwell woman - as it should! It shouldn’t make you reluctant to go to the doctor when you’re unwell – but it should make you want to fight for your health – you do have the right to live a pain-free life and not just accept it as an unfortunate part of life.