All in Her Head: The Truth and Lies Early Medicine Taught Us about Women's Bodies and Why It Matters Today
A surprising, groundbreaking, and fiercely entertaining medical history that is both a collective narrative of women’s bodies and a call to action for a new conversation around women’s health.
Much of what we know about women’s bodies and health has come from men. Their points of view have helped shaped the way we feel about our bodies—and the kind of medical attention we receive. Women’s bodies have never been considered as powerful, capable, or of equal worth as men’s. Our “normal” bodily functions—as well as our pain, pleasure, strength, and intellectual capacity—have been based on an overwhelmingly male narrative uninformed by women’s own voices, and often used to shame and subjugate us. The result is a cultural and societal legacy that continues to shape our health, despite recent advances that challenge it.
Memorial Sloan Kettering oncologist and medical historian Elizabeth Comen, M.D., sets out to change this. In this informative, eye-opening book, she unpacks this legacy, taking us on a tour of each of our body’s systems—the endocrine system (hormonal), skeletal, muscular, circulatory, respiratory, digestive, urinary, immune system, nervous system, sexual and reproductive—to (re-)introduce how they work and the historical doctors and patients whose perspectives and experiences laid the foundation for our current understanding, as well as the many oversights which remain unaddressed.
Drawn from primary medical texts and journals and Comen’s own experience treating thousands of women, written with humor, wisdom, and deep scientific and cultural insight, All in Her Head reframes outdated narratives to provide a more accurate assessment of women’s health and what female bodies require to be truly healthy. By illuminating our medical past, we can understand how it affects our lives today and provide better care for the future. A riveting medical history, it is an essential contribution to the literature on women’s health and a way forward to achieve higher standards of care for all.
