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All in Her Head: The Truth and Lies Early Medicine Taught Us About Women’s Bodies and Why It Matters Today

Book by Elizabeth Comen · 9 quotes · Women, Feminism, Health

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All in Her Head: The Truth and Lies Early Medicine Taught Us About Women’s Bodies and Why It Matters Today Quotes

“The immense ignorance surrounding heart disease in women is one of the better-known scandals to come out of medical history, an egregious example of entrenched bias within not just circulatory medicine but science altogether, one whose influence is plainly visible today.”

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Book:All in Her Head: The Truth and Lies Early Medicine Taught Us About Women’s Bodies and Why It Matters Today
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“Between the purported sex appeal of tuberculosis and its special deadliness in young people, being afflicted with the disease—or at least, looking like you were—became associated with a certain status. This was a moment at which a woman’s value was strongly tied to femininity, fragility, and purity alike. The consumptive girl lived at the tantalizing nexus of all three: being made at once sexually desirable by sickness yet also too sick to consummate that desire. And her death, heartbreaking as it was, only cemented her status as a sort of archetype of female purity, unsullied by the usual forces that conspired to slowly rob a woman of her value. It was possible, in this moment, to imagine that tuberculosis patients were destined for something greater, something more meaningful, than the ordinary vagaries of a mortal life: when the consumptive girl passed, it would be in a state of unpolluted grace”

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Book:All in Her Head: The Truth and Lies Early Medicine Taught Us About Women’s Bodies and Why It Matters Today
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“And the female body, so many of whose workings remain medically mysterious even in an otherwise enlightened age, and so revered for its ability to grow, nurture, protect, and eventually give forth new life, also remains a vessel into which we can place all manner of things: blame, ignorance, incuriosity, fear.”

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Book:All in Her Head: The Truth and Lies Early Medicine Taught Us About Women’s Bodies and Why It Matters Today
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“Thousands of year ago, a Viking warrior was laid to rest in a grave adorned with a sword, an axe, a spear, armor piercing arrows, a battle knife, two shields, and two horses, all suggestive of a professional, high-ranking commander. When the grave was discovered in the late nineteenth century, experts agreed this must be the burial site of an esteemed MALE warrior. It wasn't until the 1970s that some scientists looked more closely at the remains and asked: Could these small, gracile bones be the remains of a woman? The greater scientific community balked; the very idea of a female warrior was too ridiculous to entertain. And yet, fifty years later, a DNA analysis of the Viking skeleton by Stockholm Unversity osteologist Anna Kjellstrom conclusively proved it accurate. It only took so long, and required so much, because the bones told a different story than the medical institions and experts of the 1800s did. The skeleton was clearly female - but the men saw what they wished to see, what they'd been taught to see.”

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Book:All in Her Head: The Truth and Lies Early Medicine Taught Us About Women’s Bodies and Why It Matters Today
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