Hot and Bothered: Women, Medicine, and Menopause in Modern America

by Judith A. Houck

Book Overview

How did menopause change from being a natural (and often welcome)end to a woman's childbearing years to a deficiency disease in need ofmedical and pharmacological intervention? As she traces themedicalization of menopause over the last 100 years, historian JudithHouck challenges some widely held assumptions. Physicians hardlyfoisted hormones on reluctant female patients; rather, physiciansthemselves were often reluctant to claim menopause as a medicalproblem and resisted the widespread use of hormone therapy for whatwas, after all, a normal transition in a woman's lifespan, Houck arguesthat the medical and popular understandings of menopause at anygiven time depended on both pharmacological options and culturalideas and anxieties of the moment.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0674018966
• ISBN13: 9780674018969
• Release Date: February 2006
• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Length: 328 Pages
• Weight: 1.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.0" x 9.9"