Female Complaint Research Articles

Hur mycket plats får kvinnor (ä)ta upp? Mat, rum och kroppshyddor

Women's sense of threatened or threatening boundaries, bodily and psychological, are implicated in complaints such as anorexia and bulimia, on the one hand, and agoraphobia and claustrophobia on the other. Like agoraphobia, anorexia is a predominantly female complaint. Affecting around five to ten percent of American women and leading to contemporary death råtes at around 150,000 ayear in America alone (Brumberg), it is reportededly on the increase, and has been so since World War II. Is there some relation between feminism's bid for independence and the rise in anorexia? It is theorized that anorexics, after a period of (futile?) protest and clamoring, succumb to the family's critical attitude and shift strategies in their struggle toward independence: instead, they become anorexics. Possibly, the increase of anorexia after World War II cotdd be related to the transformation of women's situation and the concomitant changes in expectations. This has led some antifeminists, unaware of the history of anorexia, to blame feminism for the rise in anorexia. At the same time, most women in the Western world, in my view, are bulimarexics to some degree, something that is reflected and compounded in women's magazines with their continuous and contradictory parades of feasting and fasting. On one leve), anorexia can be seen as a retreat from the world and a shrinking in space - a centripetal contraction of oneself, perhaps in defense. In its insatiability, bulimia, on the other hand, appears to be anorexia's centrifugal opposite. I do not, however, think of these complaints as opposites. Rather, I think that there is both in anorexia and bulimia, and in bulimarexia, a desire to break out of the boundaried space that is the female body as defined in Western culture: a paradoxical refusal to curb one's voracity. If spaciousness and freedom are interimplicated, as I would like to suggest - open spaces associating to freedom and freedom presupposing space in which one can tnove without restraint - then anorexia, like bulimia and bulimarexia, is a way of requesting more space - hut a differently constituted space.

REVIEWS

Journal Article REVIEWS Get access Motives of Woe: Shakespeare and ‘Female Complaint’. A Critical Anthology. Edited by JOHN KERRIGAN. Pp. xiv+310. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991. £40. ANTHEA HUME ANTHEA HUME University of Reading Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Review of English Studies, Volume XLV, Issue 180, November 1994, Pages 603–604, https://doi.org/10.1093/res/XLV.180.603 Published: 01 November 1994

Revolutionary Anorexia (Nep as Female Complaint)

Revolutionary Anorexia (Nep as Female Complaint)

George Beard and Lydia Pinkham: gender, class, and nerves in late 19th century America.

A historical comparison of the careers of George Beard, medical doctor, and Lydia Pinkham, feminist and patent medicine maker, demonstrates the complex social nature of the experience of nerves among late 19th century women. Special attention is paid to the roles played by changing gender and class ideologies in Pinkham's and Beard's theories of nerves during the period from the 1870s to World War I. A comparison of contemporary anthropological and historical studies of gender and nerves leads to the conclusion that nerves, as a female complaint, takes hold of the popular and medical imagination during periods of dramatic social change which threaten women's traditional family roles and challenge their sense of self-identity.

Urogenital involvements and rheumatic disorders in females. An interview study

To study dependence between urogenital involvements and musculoskeletal complaints in females, 311 randomly selected women aged 15 to 54 were interviewed. In the analysis of these dependences musculoskeletal complaints were considered as a whole per person. A history of salpingitis, gonorrhoea, urinary tract infection (UTI) and Trichomonas vaginalis was revealed as constituting a relative risk factor of 4.4, 3.9, 3.1 and 4.5 respectively in connection with inflammatory rheumatic disease or suspicion of it, with or without dorsal pains of unknown cause. Anamnestic cervicitis was disclosed as constituting a relative risk factor of 1.9 in connection with joint pains in the extremities and 1.8 in connection with dorsalgia of unknown cause, but not a statistically significant relative risk of inflammatory rheumatic diseases or suspicion of them. Salpingitis is proposed as a diagnostic criterion for female Reiter's syndrome. In epidemiologic work the importance of considering the medical history of musculoskeletal complaints as a whole per person is emphasized.

HYPERPROLACTINEMIA IN ADOLESCENCE

Hyperprolactinemia is recognized commonly as a cause of menstrual dysfunction and hypogonadism in adults but is often assumed to be rare in adolescents. The clinical features of this in adolescence have not been well characterized. We have studied 20 patients with adolescent onset of hyperprolactinemia. Initial results on 16 (13 females and 3 males) are as follows: The cause of hyperprolactinemia was microadenoma in 6, macroadenoma in 7, pituitary cyst in 1 and tumor hydrocephalus in 2. Onset was between 9 and 19 years with a mean of 14.6 years but the diagnosis was delayed almost 5 years to a mean age of 19.3 years. Prolacting levels varied from 33 to 3450 ng/ml. Presenting complaints in females were: Amenorrhea in 64%, galactorrhea in 18%, cystic acne in 9%. Galactorrhea was present in 73% but only 1/3 of these were aware of it. Headaches were present in 82%. 6 of 8 patients had withdrawal bleeding after Provera.3 patterns of pubertal progression were seen: 1)primary amenorrhea 18%, 2)normal menarche with only a few periods 36%, 3) normal menarche, irregular menses for several years and amenorrhea in 46%. 4 of 5 patients with macroadenomas have had surgery, radiotherapy or both and 3 of these have residual hyperprolactinemia and other residua. Although hyperprolactinemia is a common cause of menstrual or pubertal disturbance in adolescence, diagnosis is usually delayed. Because outcome is often suboptimal, an effort toward timely diagnosis is indicated.

The sexual politics of pre-menstrual tension

This article argues for a re-evaluation of the feminist acceptance of the concept PMT from several different angles: (1) Initially I look at the basis on which PMT is built—the splitting that is enforced upon us between Good women and Bad women and the good and bad in ourselves, the way in which women are encouraged to label unacceptable emotions sickness, and to deny their responsibility for them. (2) Further I shall bring into question the whole idea of ‘illness’ and will try to demonstrate that all illness, not only those generally thought of as psychosomatic, are in a sense socially-defined and hence open to political analysis. (3) To try to see PMT more clearly, I have looked at the history of the concept—both in terms of a comparison of PMT with nineteenth century female complaints, and in terms of the gradual promotion and development of the idea over the last 50 years. An aspect of this is (4) examining in some detail the anti-woman ideological content of the current wave of PMT-promotion, and questioning in whose interests PMT really operates. (5) Finally I look briefly at the scientific evidence offered for the existence of a clear category of illness called PMT and at some of the theories put forward about its causes.

Female Complaints: Lydia Pinkham and the Business of Women's Medicine

Female Complaints: Lydia Pinkham and the Business of Women's Medicine

Female Complaints: Lydia Pinkham and the Business of Women's Medicine

Female Complaints: Lydia Pinkham and the Business of Women's Medicine

Urogenital involvements and musculoskeletal complaints in women. An interview study and clinical investigation with special reference to chlamydial infections.

To study the correlation of urogenital involvements and musculoskeletal complaints in females, 311 randomly selected women, aged 15 to 54, were interviewed. In addition, clinical gynecological examination including isolation and serology of Chlamydia trachomatis (Ct) was performed for 30 consecutive volunteers. A history of musculoskeletal complaints occurred in 218 (70.1%) and a history of urogenital involvements in 244 (78.5%) of the 311 women. The number of urogenital involvements in 218 females with musculoskeletal complaints was 453, a significantly higher frequency than the 120 urogenital involvements in 93 females without musculoskeletal complaints. The most important urogenital involvements appeared to be cervicitis, dysuria, Trichomonas vaginalis infections and pyelocystitis/-nephritis. Regarding the musculoskeletal complaints, histories of unexplained dorsalgia and anamnestic joint pains in the extremities occurred more often in the females with a history of urogenital involvements than in those without such a history. There were anamnestic urogenital involvements in 28 (93.3%) of the 30 volunteers. The clinical investigation revealed gynecological disease in only 16 (53.3%). Isolation of Ct was negative in 29 and contaminated in one. Chlamydial immunofluorescence serology was positive (titre greater than 64) in 5 (16.7%). The results of this study speak for the importance of infections in the genito-urinary tract as a possible triggering factor in rheumatic disorders in females. This conception is supported by the correlation of the musculoskeletal complaints especially with past histories of urogenital involvement. No such correlation was found with recent histories of urinary tract involvements, nor with the actual pathological findings of those gynecologically examined.

Female Complaints: Lydia Pinkham and the Business of Women's Medicine

Female Complaints: Lydia Pinkham and the Business of Women's Medicine

Lasers versus Female Complaints

People who think of lasers in surgery are likely to think first of eye surgery. It was in that department of surgery that lasers were first employed, and in which over the years they have received a good deal of publicity. Gynecology is reputed to be one of the largest medical specialties. Whatever may be the comparative statistics between gynecological surgery and ocular surgery. it is certain that the world's hospitals see a good number of gynecological operations in a year. Thus, the extension of laser techniques to gynecological treatments, which has begun in the last couple of years, promises to add greatly to the number of those who benefit from the laser's surgical capabilities. Among those benefits, according to J. H. Bellina of Louisiana State University School of Medicine, who was invited to review progress in the field at the recent Lasers '80 Conference in New Orleans, is a higher probability of eradication of premalignant and malignant conditions and the maintenance or restoration of fertility in cases where other techniques could not. The instrument generally used for this work, he says, is the so-called AO 100, which uses articulated mirrors to deliver a spot of laser light to the point where the surgeon wants it. This system has gotten smaller over the years since 1974, Bellina says, both in gross physical size -its electrical housing was once six feet across and in the size of the spot of laser light it delivers, which can now be as small as 125 micrometers under certain conditions. One purpose of these tiny pinpoints of light is to destroy the abnormal growths in the lining of the cervix, known as dysplastic cells, and the carcinoma in situ or superficial cancer that sometimes develops from the dysplastic lesions. Dysplasia is not a rare disease. Bellina says it is reaching epidemic proportions in the United States, not to mention other parts of the world. Furthermore, the age of onset has been dropping. Years ago dysplasia was seen usually in mature women, women in their thirties and older. Now the average age of incidence is in the 14to 25-year range, Bellina says, and pushing toward the pre-teen years. The carcinoma that may develop from it is not far behind: Bellina says the earliest carcinoma in situ in his experience was in a 14-year-old. And I've had a 21-year-old already dead from it, he adds. Not all appearances of dysplasia which is sometimes called precancerous tissue develop into malignancies. The figure is about 30 percent. The rest tend to regress and disappear. But we don't have a good model to tell us which will and which won't, says Bellina. So the obvious therapeutic procedure is to get rid of it all, to destroy the dysplastic cells thoroughly enough to prevent recurrences. At the beginning of the 1970s cryosurgery was applied, but there seemed to be a hazard: the survival of a certain amount of the DNA of the dysplastic cells, which could then serve to trigger a recurrence. Lasers were brought in to see if they could do better. One question was how deep the killing of cells and destruction of DNA had to go. The textbooks said 3 millimeters deep. Cryosurgery had gone that deep, but apparently something underneath had escaped. Textbooks to the contrary, Bellina says, Nobody had ever sat down and measured this. The laser surgeons tried at first to develop some range finding indicators, but the effort proved costly, and the patients' heartbeats were confusing the issue because they gave the tissue pulsations with a 2-millimeter amplitude. The researchers decided to do the job clinically, starting very shallow and going deeper and deeper till they reached a point of optimum benefit. At 3 millimeters they had a 16 percent recurrence rate. They decided, Bellina says, We'll go wider and just go deeper. The depth went to 4, 4.5, 5 even to 7 millimeters. Below 5 millimeters they got the recurrence rate down to 4.4 percent. As of today, in 1,500 cases that they have followed for some time, there is a recurrence rate of about 5 percent. Where there is carcinoma in situ, the laser technique is to try to destroy all of the tumor. The way this is done, the way the laser heat transfer vaporizes the cells and destroys the chemical bonds in their DNA and RNA material, seems particularly effective in destroying the malignancy and preventing recurrence. As an example, the 14-year-old girl mentioned above, who caught the disease from her mother, has now been followed for two years without a recurrence.

304 pp. $10.95Sarah Stage, Female Complaints: Lydia Pinkham and the Business of Women's Medicine, Norton, Chicago, IL (1979).

304 pp. $10.95Sarah Stage, Female Complaints: Lydia Pinkham and the Business of Women's Medicine, Norton, Chicago, IL (1979).

Female Complaints: Lydia Pinkham and the Business of Women's Medicine. By Sarah Stage. New York, W.W. Norton & Company, 1979. Pp. 304. $10.95.

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Book Reviews

Journal Article Book Reviews Get access SARAH STAGE. Female Complaints: Lydia Pinkham and the Business of Women's Medicine. New York, W. W. Norton § Company, 1979. 304 PP., illus. $10.95. REGINA MARKELL MORANTZ REGINA MARKELL MORANTZ University of Kansas4400 Tomahawk Road, Prairie Village, Kansas 66208 Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, Volume XXXIV, Issue 4, October 1979, Pages 495–496, https://doi.org/10.1093/jhmas/XXXIV.4.495 Published: 01 October 1979

Relationship between Non-specific Complaints in Females and Ovarian Functions

Relationship between Non-specific Complaints in Females and Ovarian Functions

Sexual counseling. What the busy physician can, and cannot, do.

Patients with sexual problems often seek help first from their family physician. Before referring these patients, the physician should determine the kind of dysfunction present and whether it might successfully be treated in the general office setting. Secondary impotence can often be overcome by simple reassurance or by a program of frequent sexual foreplay and avoidance of actual intercourse. A stop-start method of reconditioning has had some success in the treatment of premature ejaculation. Anorgasmia is a commonly reported female complaint. If caused by inadequate foreplay, counseling and interpersonal discussion should lead to successful resolution. There is some evidence that anorgasmia in some cases may result from clitoral adhesion or underdevelopment of the pubococcygeus muscle. Both conditions may be simply remedied.

THE EVIL EFFECTS OF HIGHER EDUCATION FOR GIRLS— ACCORDING TO DR. S. WEIR MITCHELL

During the latter half of the nineteenth century most physicians in this country were convinced that girls should not undergo the same rigorous scholastic programs as boys their age. The explanation usually given was that too much stimulation of the girl's brain would cause dire effects on the "female organs." The simplistic explanation went as follows: "The nutritive demands of the stimulated brain would jeopardize the nutritive needs of the girl's reproductive organs." This would cause not only disabling "female complaints" but bad health in general. Dr. S. Weir Mitchell (1829-1914) vividly expressed the commonly-held view of the harmful effects of nineteenth century female education in these words: "Worst of all, to my mind, most destructive in every way, is the American view of female education. The time taken for the more serious instruction of girls extends to the age of eighteen, and rarely over this. During these years, they are undergoing such organic development as renders them remarkably sensitive... To show more precisely how the growing girl is injured by the causes just mentioned (forced and continued study at the sexual epoch) would carry me upon subjects unfit for full discussion in these pages; but no thoughtful reader can be much at a loss as to my meaning... To-day the American woman is, to speak plainly, physically unfit for her duties as woman, and is, perhaps, of all civilized females, the least qualified to undertake those weightier tasks which tax so heavily the nervous system of man. She is not fairly up to what Nature asks for her as wife and mother.

HYSTERIA IN CHILDREN.

Hysteria in children was first described by Ranvlin, in 1748. Before him, in 1681, Lepois had ventured to combat Hipprocrates' view that it was a uterine disorder, and heretofore only a female complaint, but he had not gone beyond this. Nor did Ranvlin treat of the subject in a clear manner. It remained for Briquet, in 1855, to show that it did occur in children, and as frequently as in adults. At that time Carter and Brodie had already published their admirable articles on hysteria in adults, but they had ignored its presence in childhood. Since Briquet's time, Bourneville, Baginsky, Tourette, Casaubon, Ollivier, Clopault, Richer, Charcot, etc., have enriched the literature on the subject. To-day it is generally accepted that hysteria is not rare among children, and that as a children's disease it dates from antiquity, as witness the children's crusades, the epidemics of chorea magna, the tale of the

RETROVERSION OF THE UTERUS.

Retro-displacement of the uterus is one of the most important conditions which the gynecologist and the family physician are called upon to remedy in the treatment of female complaints. It is important because the condition frequently exists, because it produces a long train of symptoms which frequently end in invalidism, and because it is frequently ignored if discovered at all by physicians whose experience ought to teach them better. Because the uterus is a movable organ, because it is behind the bladder which must fill and empty, and in front of the rectum which must distend and contract, because it is subject to the intra-abdominal pressure with every inspiration and expiration of the woman; because it is fixed with elastic and muscular supports which protect it from sudden jars; because of all of this it does not prove that there can be no normal position of the uterus and hence