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Thesis ID: CBB001561590

Female Complaints: The Medical Diagnosis and Treatment of British Women, 1590--1740 (2005)

Churchill, Wendy D. (Author)

McMaster University (Canada)

Publication Date: 2005
Physical Details: 291 pp.
Language: English

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Medicine and gender Women and health Medicine Women's diseases 18th century 17th century Great Britain

This investigation contributes to the existing scholarship on women and medicine in early modern Britain by examining the diagnosis and treatment of female patients by male professional medical practitioners, 1590--1740. In order to obtain a clearer understanding of female illness and medicine during this period, this study examines those ailments which were specific and unique to female patients as well as illnesses and conditions which afflicted both female and male patients. Through a qualitative and quantitative analysis of practitioners' records and patients' writings, an emphasis is placed on actual medical practice. This study reveals that the sex of the patient was an important constitutional variable which, along with those of age and race, had important implications for the diagnosis and treatment of illness. Straight- forward, linear paradigms of the body premised on one sex/age/race were not employed in the actual practice of medicine. Sex always mattered and, moreover, was intricately connected to additional constitutional variables (age and race) and societal factors (marital status and social rank). Despite the preponderance of females amongst physicians' casebooks and the existence of sex-based differences in the consultations, diagnoses and treatments of patients, there is no evidence to indicate that the health or medical care of females were distinctly disadvantaged by the actions of male practitioners. Instead, the diagnoses and treatments of women were premised on a much deeper and more nuanced understanding of the female body than has previously been implied within the historiography. In turn, their awareness and appreciation of the unique features of female anatomy and physiology meant that male practitioners were sympathetic and accommodating to the needs of individual female patients during this pivotal period in British medicine.

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Description Cited in Diss. Abstr. Int. A 66/10 (2006): 3772. UMI pub. no. NR07891.

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https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001561590/

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