All in Her Head: The Truth and Lies Early Medicine Taught Us About Women's Bodies and Why It Matters Today

by Elizabeth Comen

Overview

USA Today Bestseller

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.

For as long as medicine has been a practice, women's bodies have been treated like objects to be practiced on: examined and ignored, idealized and sexualized, shamed, subjugated, mutilated, and dismissed. The history of women’s healthcare is a story in which women themselves have too often been voiceless—a narrative instead written from the perspective of men who styled themselves as authorities on the female of the species, yet uninformed by women’s own voices, thoughts, fears, pain and experiences. The result is a cultural and societal leg­acy that continues to shape the (mis)treatment and care of women.

While the modern age has seen significant advancements in the medical field, the notion that female bodies are flawed inversions of the male ideal lingers on—as do the pervasive societal stigmas and lingering ignorance that shape women’s health and relationships with their own bodies.

Memorial Sloan Kettering oncologist and medical historian Dr. Elizabeth Comen draws back the curtain on the collective medical history of women to reintroduce us to our whole bodies—how they work, the actual doctors and patients whose perspectives and experiences laid the foundation for today’s medical thought, and the many oversights that still remain unaddressed. With a physician’s knowledge and empathy, Dr. Comen follows the road map of the eleven organ systems to share unique and untold stories, drawing upon medical texts and journals, interviews with expert physicians, as well as her own  experience treating thousands of women.

Empowering women to better understand ourselves and advocate for care that prioritizes healthy and joyful lives— for us and generations to come—All in Her Head is written with humor, wisdom, and deep scientific and cultural insight. Eye-opening, sometimes enraging, yet always captivating, this shared memoir of women’s medical history is an essential contribution to a holistic understanding and much-needed reclaiming of women’s history and bodies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780063293014
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	02/13/2024
Pages:	368
Sales rank:	23,224
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Elizabeth Comen, MD, has dedicated her medical career to saving the lives of women. An award-winning, internationally sought-af­ter clinician and physician-scientist, Dr. Comen works as a medical oncologist with a specialty in breast cancer at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and is an assistant professor of medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College. She earned her BA in the history of science from Harvard College and her MD from Harvard Medical School, then completed her resi­dency in Internal Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital and her fellowship in oncology at Memorial Sloan Ketter­ing Cancer Center. She lives in New York City with her family.

Editorial Reviews

★ 12/04/2023

Oncologist Comen serves up a startling survey of how male medical professionals have dismissed, pathologized, and misunderstood women’s bodies throughout history. Comen notes that 16th-century doctors prescribed penetrative sex as a treatment for the bogus diagnosis of chlorosis, which was thought to afflict young women suffering from “weakness and pallor,” and that the erroneous 19th-century belief that women don’t get heart disease continues to reverberate in the underrepresentation, and sometimes outright omission, of women from studies on the condition. Highlighting how health guidance for women has often been based more in patriarchal values than objective science, Comen explains that Victorian dietary advice discouraged women from “eating meat, or eating too much,” because male doctors believed women were “congenitally less capable” of controlling their appetite. Moral panics about wearing corsets, masturbating, and bicycling followed the same pattern, Comen contends, arguing that complaints about the latter, ostensibly stemming from fear that cycling would damage genitalia, were actually about men’s anxieties over the independence afforded women by the new mode of travel. Meticulously researched and conveyed in lucid prose, this fascinates and outrages in equal measure. Agent: Yfat Reiss Gendell, YRG Partners. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

Wow! This book will upend everything you thought you knew about your body while empowering you to make better decisions moving forward. Through storytelling, extensive research, and easy recommendations, Dr. Elizabeth Comen has given us all a priceless road map to reclaim our agency.” — Eve Rodsky, author of Fair Play

“All in Her Head accomplishes a remarkable feat of storytelling. By combining essential medical histories about women’s bodies with all the narrative propulsion of a medical thriller, Comen has written a must-read, compelling, and important book.” — Siddartha Mukherjee, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Emperor of All Maladies and The Song of the Cell

“Dr. Elizabeth Comen has given a priceless gift to women and the medical world, sharing profound insights from her experiences as a physician with touching compassion, empathy, wit, and a fierce determination to improve women’s health and health care. Brava for a book that really matters, that empowers patients to take charge of their health, that challenges healthcare systems to change, and will improve the lives of all who read it!” — Joann E. Manson, MD, DRPH, MACP, chief of the Division of Preventive Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital and professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School

“This book exposes the shocking, infuriating, and heartbreaking medical myths and practices that have haunted the care and treatment of women for millennia—myths about the inherent inferiority and weakness of the female body that are still with us today. All in Her Head is not only personally empowering for women but it’s also a call to reimagine what medicine would look like if we valued what has been left out of our medical system: the high art and skill of caretaking.” — Elizabeth Lesser, cofounder of the Omega Institute and author of Marrow and Cassandra Speaks

“Meticulously researched and conveyed in lucid prose, this fascinates and outrages in equal measure.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)

From the Publisher

Anna Caputo uses a blend of authority and compassion to deliver oncologist Elizabeth Comen's accounts of the ineffective and even harmful medical treatment given to women over four centuries. Comen's hands-on experience and extensive research inform her narrative of doctors' gross misunderstandings of women's bodies. Caputo delivers startling stories of bizarre treatments that took place from the sixteenth to the early twentieth century, as well as present-day struggles that women still face. Caputo ensures that the author's sarcasm and wit come through; both enliven the writing and the narration. This audiobook may outrage listeners as they hear how patriarchal values have compromised women's health. Comen's advice ultimately encourages women to reclaim their power by making better informed medical decisions. S.W. © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine

APRIL 2024 - AudioFile