The French Invention of Menopause and the Medicalisation of Women's Ageing

Doctors writing about menopause in France vastly outnumbered those in other cultures throughout the entire nineteenth century. The concept of menopause was invented by Frenchmen medical students in the aftermath of the French Revolution, becoming an important pedagogic topic and a common theme of do...

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Autor principal: Downham Moore, Alison M.
Formato: Online
Idioma:inglês
Publicado em: Oxford University Press 2023
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Acesso em linha:OCN: 1314429643
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author Downham Moore, Alison M.
author_browse Downham Moore, Alison M.
author_facet Downham Moore, Alison M.
author_sort Downham Moore, Alison M.
collection Directory of Open Access Books
description Doctors writing about menopause in France vastly outnumbered those in other cultures throughout the entire nineteenth century. The concept of menopause was invented by Frenchmen medical students in the aftermath of the French Revolution, becoming an important pedagogic topic and a common theme of doctors’ professional identities in postrevolutionary biomedicine. Older women were identified as an important patient cohort for the expanding medicalisation of French society and were advised to entrust themselves to the hygienic care of doctors in managing the whole era of life from around and after the final cessation of menses. However, menopause owed much of its conceptual weft to earlier themes of women as the sicker sex, of vitalist crisis, of the vapours, and of astrological climacteric years. This book is the first comprehensive study of the origins of the medical concept of menopause, richly contextualising its role in nineteenth-century French medicine and revealing the complex threads of meaning that informed its invention. It tells a complex story of how women’s ageing featured in the demographic revolution in modern science, in the denigration of folk medicine, in the unique French field of hygiène, and in the fixation on women in the emergence of modern psychiatry. It also reveals the nineteenth-century French origins of the still-current medical and alternative-health approaches to women’s ageing as something to be managed through gynaecological surgery, hormonal replacement, and lifestyle intervention.
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spelling doab-20.500.12854ir-1214922025-03-20T14:20:20Z The French Invention of Menopause and the Medicalisation of Women's Ageing Downham Moore, Alison M. history of menopause, French medical history, French women’s history, history of women’s ageing, women as patients in modern biomedicine, gendered medical concepts Doctors writing about menopause in France vastly outnumbered those in other cultures throughout the entire nineteenth century. The concept of menopause was invented by Frenchmen medical students in the aftermath of the French Revolution, becoming an important pedagogic topic and a common theme of doctors’ professional identities in postrevolutionary biomedicine. Older women were identified as an important patient cohort for the expanding medicalisation of French society and were advised to entrust themselves to the hygienic care of doctors in managing the whole era of life from around and after the final cessation of menses. However, menopause owed much of its conceptual weft to earlier themes of women as the sicker sex, of vitalist crisis, of the vapours, and of astrological climacteric years. This book is the first comprehensive study of the origins of the medical concept of menopause, richly contextualising its role in nineteenth-century French medicine and revealing the complex threads of meaning that informed its invention. It tells a complex story of how women’s ageing featured in the demographic revolution in modern science, in the denigration of folk medicine, in the unique French field of hygiène, and in the fixation on women in the emergence of modern psychiatry. It also reveals the nineteenth-century French origins of the still-current medical and alternative-health approaches to women’s ageing as something to be managed through gynaecological surgery, hormonal replacement, and lifestyle intervention. 2023-11-16T11:17:43Z 2023-11-16T11:17:43Z 2023-10-09T12:24:02Z 2022 book OCN: 1314429643 https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/76597 https://directory.doabooks.org/handle/20.500.12854/121492 eng open access image/jpeg image/jpeg image/jpeg Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/20.500.12657/76597/1/9780192842916.pdf https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/20.500.12657/76597/1/9780192842916.pdf https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/20.500.12657/76597/1/9780192842916.pdf Oxford University Press 10.1093/oso/9780192842916.001.0001 10.1093/oso/9780192842916.001.0001 db4e319f-ca9f-449a-bcf2-37d7c6f885b1 Australian Research Council 2b499bba-4c72-4c14-ba3d-ad473c6e6069 501 Oxford DP190101457 open access
spellingShingle history of menopause, French medical history, French women’s history, history of women’s ageing, women as patients in modern biomedicine, gendered medical concepts
Downham Moore, Alison M.
The French Invention of Menopause and the Medicalisation of Women's Ageing
title The French Invention of Menopause and the Medicalisation of Women's Ageing
title_full The French Invention of Menopause and the Medicalisation of Women's Ageing
title_fullStr The French Invention of Menopause and the Medicalisation of Women's Ageing
title_full_unstemmed The French Invention of Menopause and the Medicalisation of Women's Ageing
title_short The French Invention of Menopause and the Medicalisation of Women's Ageing
title_sort french invention of menopause and the medicalisation of women s ageing
topic history of menopause, French medical history, French women’s history, history of women’s ageing, women as patients in modern biomedicine, gendered medical concepts
topic_facet history of menopause, French medical history, French women’s history, history of women’s ageing, women as patients in modern biomedicine, gendered medical concepts
url OCN: 1314429643
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