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Blink 3 of 8 - The 5 AM Club
by Robin Sharma
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Unwell Women summary
Elinor Cleghorn
Misdiagnosis and Myth in a Man-Made World
19 mins
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Unwell Women by Elinor Cleghorn highlights the historical misdiagnosis and mistreatment of women’s health. It examines patriarchal influences on medical science and advocates for recognizing women’s bodies and voices in healthcare practices.
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Unwell Women
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Wandering wombs
The history of women’s health is riddled with misconceptions, but few have been as persistent and influential as the “wandering womb” theory, first popularized by Hippocrates on the Greek island of Cos. While Hippocrates is celebrated for advancing medicine as a science by rejecting the notion that diseases were divine punishments, his understanding of women’s health was deeply flawed and shaped by the social structures of Ancient Greece.
In a society in which women were largely unable to seek paid employment and couldn’t own property, and their primary purpose was to bear and raise children, it seemed logical to Ancient Greek physicians that the uterus would be the source of all female ailments. Hippocrates developed the theory of the “wandering womb,” which suggested that an “unfulfilled” uterus – one not engaged in its “natural” function of sex and pregnancy – could actually migrate through the body, disrupting other organs and causing a wide range of symptoms from convulsions and hallucinations to pain and paralysis. The prescribed cures? Marriage, sexual intercourse, and pregnancy.
This concept persisted well into the Middle Ages, when women’s bodies were further burdened by religious shame stemming from the biblical story of Eve’s temptation and original sin. Medieval moral laws even prohibited medical professionals from examining women’s bodies, deepening the mystery and misunderstanding surrounding female anatomy.
Ultimately, the most effective treatment of women’s health issues came from women themselves. In eleventh-century Salerno, women began training as physicians, with Trota emerging as a particularly influential figure. Her comprehensive work, the Trotula, while still reflecting some contemporary biases about female weakness, made the groundbreaking assertion that the womb could not actually move within the body (except, to some extent, in cases of prolapse). However, because Trota was a woman and women’s health was not considered a serious medical concern, her ideas failed to gain widespread acceptance. By the fourteenth century, women were banned from practicing medicine across Europe.
The wandering womb theory’s remarkable longevity extended even into the early twentieth century, where it evolved into diagnoses of “hysteria,” demonstrating how persistent medical misconceptions about women’s bodies can be. This ancient idea exemplifies how cultural biases and social structures have historically shaped – and continue to influence – medical understanding and approaches to women’s health.
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What is Unwell Women about?
Unwell Women (2021) traces the historical misunderstanding and misdiagnosis of women’s bodies throughout medical history. Drawing from historical research. it reveals how medical knowledge has been shaped by gender bias and chronicles the stories of women who have challenged and transformed medical orthodoxy.
Who should read Unwell Women?
- Medical professionals who want to understand historic and current biases
- Women with chronic illnesses struggling to be heard in clinical settings
- Feminists ready to unravel the patriarchal history of medicine
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