…the theories which guided the doctor’s practice from the late nineteenth century to the early twentieth century held that the woman’s normal state was to be sick. This was not advanced as an empirical observation, but as physiological fact. Medicine had “discovered” that female functions were inherently pathological. Menstruation, that perennial source of alarm to the male imagination, provided both the evidence and the explanation.
“
| — | Barbara Ehrenreich & Deirdre English, ‘For Her Own Good’ |
