For a good decade leading up to the twentieth century, an estimated 150,000 oophorectomies—the removal of perfectly healthy ovaries—were performed in the United States for such afflictions as “troublesomeness, eating like a ploughman, masturbation, attempted suicide, erotic tendencies, persecution mania, simple ‘cussedness,’ and dysmenorrhea.” The trend came to an end mainly because doctors became uncomfortable sterilizing women—or, as one put it, being “the destroyer of everything that makes a woman’s life worth living.”
