Unwell Women

UNWELL WOMEN is a powerful and fascinating book that takes an unsparing look at how women's bodies have been misunderstood and misdiagnosed for centuries. From wandering wombs to demonic explanations of menopause, Elinor Cleghorn packs each page with disturbing historical details that will haunt your psyche for days and weeks to come. - Lindsey Fitzharris, author of The Butchering Art

Unwell Women is one of the most important books of our generation. I read it in a rage, and recognised myself in its pages. - Fern Riddell, author of Death in Ten Minutes

Cultural historian Cleghorn's meticulous and wide-ranging debut examines the links between patriarchy, misogyny, and the mistreatment of women's health needs... After building a damning historical case against the medical field, Cleghorn shares the harrowing story of how her symptoms were "overlooked, ignored, and dismissed" for seven years before she was diagnosed with lupus. The result is a deeply informed and passionately argued call for change. - Publishers Weekly

This book will make you angry. And so it should! Just like their brains, women's bodies have been treated as defective and deficient for centuries... Even in the 21st Century Cleghorn uncovers harsh truths about medicine's continuing biases, especially in the intersection between gender and race. Hopefully this book will be a wake-up call to a profession that can still refer dismissively to 'women's problems.' - Gina Rippon, author of The Gendered Brain

If doctors have ever misdiagnosed you, disbelieved your symptoms, or discriminated against you, then Unwell Women is the holy grail of answers you have been waiting for. Elinor Cleghorn has written a decisive, comprehensive, well-researched, and fascinating book about the ways in which medicine has failed women, from the 19th century until now, and what that neglect has cost us-including our lives. I wish I'd had this book in 2018 when I was fighting with my gynecologist to remove my fibroids, but I am glad to have it as I navigate two chronic illnesses; as we continually negotiate power dynamics with doctors, Unwell Women will instantly become an invaluable addition to the arsenal of tools we need to fight for the care we deserve. - Evette Dionne, author of Lifting as We Climb

If you live in a female body, and if you've ever thought to yourself, "Why-oh-why are doctors not taking my legitimate health concerns seriously," this book answers that question definitively. This history of the female patient is the one I was searching for the entire time I was writing my own book, and I cannot recommend it highly enough. One thousand more books like this, please. - Sarah Ramey, author of The Lady's Handbook For Her Mysterious Illness