Women Under The Knife: A History of Surgery - Hardcover

Dally, Ann

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9780091748265: Women Under The Knife: A History of Surgery

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0091748267 ISBN 13: 9780091748265

Publisher: Hutchinson, 1980

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In the nineteenth century, major developments in internal surgery were due to operations on ovaries. Women bore the brunt of surgical experimentation and also reaped its rewards. Their need was great, but so was their compliance. From the first operation in America in 1809, much suffering was relieved at the expense of prolonged surgery endured by both black slaves and prosperous whites. Later, in the Victorian era, many surgeons looked at certain types of behavior as reasons for mutilating operations. Such procedures as "spaying" and clitoridectomies were performed to "cure" hysteria and masturbation, as well as questionable interventionalist surgery in pregnancy and childbirth which still continue today.

Women Under the Knife is an extraordinary history, giving a vivid picture--medical, literary, and sociological--of Victorian society in America and Europe.

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From the Author:

Explaining feminists and gynecologists to each other
Deals with the background to modern attitudes towards women and gynaecology. The nineteenth century idea that everything wrong with a woman MUST be due to her reproductive system which should therefore be surgically altered or removed. The boost this gave to the development of surgery and the skills of surgeons. I have written a sequel to this book called 'Fantasy Surgery, published by Rodopi, Atlanta and Amsterdam, 1996.

About the Author:

Dr. Ann Dally read Modern History at Somerville College, Oxford, and was one of the first women to study medicine at St. Thomas's Hospital, London. She is married with children and grandchildren, and divides her time between West Sussex and London.

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