Title: Medical Bondage
Subtitle: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology
Description: The accomplishments of pioneering American doctors such as John Peter Mettauer, James Marion Sims, and Nathan Bozeman are well documented. It is also no secret that these nineteenth-century gynecologists performed experimental cesarean sections, ovariotomies, and obstetric fistula repairs primarily on poor and powerless women. "Medical Bondage" breaks new ground by exploring how and why physicians denied these women their full humanity yet valued them as "medical superbodies" highly suited for medical experimentation. Even as they were advancing, these doctors were legitimizing groundless theories related to whiteness and blackness, men and women, and the inferiority of other races or nationalities. "Medical Bondage" moves between southern plantations and northern urban centers to reveal how nineteenth-century American ideas about race, health, and status influenced doctor-patient relationships in sites of healing like slave cabins, medical colleges, and hospitals. -- From publisher's description.
Subjects: Medical care, Irish American women, Gynecology, Human experimentation in medicine, Women slaves, History, Human experimentation in medicine, history, Irish americans, Medical care, united states, History, 19th Century, African Americans, Enslaved Persons, Nontherapeutic Human Experimentation, Racism, Vulnerable Populations
Places: United States
Time periods: 19th century