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

by Elizabeth Comen

Women remain underrepresented and overlooked in medical research, even though many treatments interact differently in a female body than in a male one.

One recent study revealed that women operated on by men have significantly worse outcomes, including death, than when operated on by women. (As for the men, their outcomes were the same whether a man or woman operated on them.)

In addition to the idea that being immobilized was no big thing for women, patients suffering from frozen shoulder also appear to have been up against another form of prejudice that is by now familiar to any student of medical history: the notion that any problem mainly afflicting women must have a psychosomatic component.