Doing Harm: The Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick

by Maya Dusenbery

The uterine-nerve theory of hysteria proved especially useful for keeping women in their proper place; one might even suspect it was designed to. The precarious balancing act between the reproductive organs and brain meant that great swaths of a woman’s life—puberty, menstruation, pregnancy, and menopause—were all considered periods of “ill health” when her body could easily be thrown into dangerous disorder—by any activity, really, but especially by mentally taxing ones. So, Mitchell warned, “It were better not to educate girls at all between the ages of fourteen and eighteen, unless it can be done with careful reference to their bodily health.” In the midst of debate over allowing women to attend Harvard, Dr. Edward H. Clarke, a professor at the school, published Sex in Education; or, A Fair Chance for the Girls, in which he reviewed the medical literature and concluded that higher education would cause women’s uteri to atrophy. As for pursuing a career, another doctor noted, “One shudders to think of the conclusions arrived at by female bacteriologists or histologists at the period when their entire system, both physical and mental, is, so to speak ‘unstrung,’ to say nothing of the terrible mistakes which a lady surgeon might make under similar conditions.”