Cheryl Krasnick Warsh, Prescribed Norms: Women and Health in Canada and the United States since 1800, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010. Pp. xvii + 316. dollar34.95. ISBN 978 1 44260 061 4.

摘要

Since the 1980s, the history of women and health has become a lively and engaging sub-field within the history of medicine, contributing both to our scholarly understanding of this area and to women's health activism. To write, then, a history of women and health covering two centuries in two countries, as Cheryl Krasnick Warsh has done, is an ambitious project; its scope is both its strength and weakness. Prescribed Norms is divided into three parts: Part 1-Rituals-provides a cross-cultural history of menstruation, the medical treatment of menstrual complaints, and the invention of menopause as a disease; Part 2-Technologies-examines traditional and modern childbirth practices, as well as the 'future' of childbirth, focusing on new technologies and diagnostic procedures; Part 3-Professions-provides an overview of women's struggles to gain entry into medical schools and to be treated as equals in medical practice, as well as a history of the professionalisation of nursing. Throughout the book, Krasnick Warsh insists that women's health issues-both as patients and practitioners-can be understood by examining the cultural meanings assigned to women's bodily experiences.