Customer Reviews

Complaints and Disorders: The Sexual Politics of Sickness (Glass Mountain Pamphlet)

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I'm fairly stunned at the two two-star reviews here. This book was co-authored by Barbara Ehrenreich who went on to write several other WONDERFUL books, such as "Nickel and Dimed" and "For Her Own Good."

"Complaints and Disorders; The Sexual Politics of Sickness" is a short book (95 pages) but that's part of what made it such a good read. Once you start reading it, you won't want to stop until you're to the last page. And there's a lot of info packed into those pages.

On page 37, the authors write, "The entire mystique of female sickness - the house calls, the tonics and medicines, the heatlh spas - served, above all, to keep a great many women busy at the task of doing nothing."

That's what was done to women in the Victorian era. In modern times, we use beauty and weight as the lure to "keep women busy as the task of doing nothing."

There's also some background info on how women healers (or witches, as the men liked to call them) were removed from power so male doctors could enjoy their ascension to power and wealth.

It's one of a handful of books I've pressed into the hands of my daughter and said, "you have GOT to read this book." And *that's* the highest recommendation.

If you're interested in the subject the bibliography alone is worth the purchase. Great illustrations and a nice discussion with good primary source quotes on both upper/middle class women and working class women and their relationship with medicine from the turn of the last century.

Classic feminist text on women and medicine. Provides important overview on women's health in the 19th and 20th centuries. Discusses class issues as the impact on health (especially working women), public health, the medical profession, immigrants, prostitution, reformers like Margaret Sanger, etc. Still stands as essential reading for history of medicine.

This book is way too short for such an interesting topic. Another problem is that it depicts women as main victims of weird medical practices in 19th and early 20th century, which is not entirely true. At those times (and may be true today in some cases also) one would be far better off if one stayed away from medical profession. Also, there are some really hillarious things about treating hysteria which authors didnot bother to mention. For the hystory of vibrators as legitimate medical treatment for hysteria, Rachel Maines has done very good job in dealing with this topic. What is also a pity is that authors didn't pursue various medical superstitions about females and different treatment of females which are present in modern times. For example, nobody questions the articles published in peer reviewed medical journal which state that patient's absolute refusal is "relative contraindication" for performing episiotomy. Is there any other surgical procedure which can be inflicted on a patient against patient's explicitly stated wishes? Or for example the fact that many health insurances cover Viagra but don't cover contraceptives. There are many topics well worth investigation which belog to the topic "Complaints and Disorders : The Sexual Politics of Sickness" which authors have chosen not to address in this pamphlet (can't even call it a book).

An account of modern (post-Industrial Revolution) medicine's attempts to squish women under the juggernaut of progress by declaring them weak and/or unfit to achieve. While we here at History House are always suspicious of any work with an obvious political agenda (printed by The Feminist Press), the accounts of doctors and their loopy practices in the nineteenth century are a hoot. If push came to shove, we would suspect some of the wilder accounts given are probably minority views, but the prevailing notion of women as fragile bits of fluff subject to the whims of their productive systems was probably held by a majority of the docs during the period in question. Besides, it's only about ninety pages. A good bathroom read. [HistoryHouse.com]