All in Her Head

The Truth and Lies Early Medicine Taught Us About Women’s Bodies and Why It Matters Today

By: Elizabeth Comen

Narrated by: Anna Caputo

Length: 13 hrs and 25 mins

Publisher's summary

USA Today Bestseller

A surprising, groundbreaking, and fiercely entertaining medical history that is both a collective narrative of women’s bodies and a call to action for a new conversation around women’s health.

For as long as medicine has been a practice, women's bodies have been treated like objects to be practiced on: examined and ignored, idealized and sexualized, shamed, subjugated, mutilated, and dismissed. The history of women’s healthcare is a story in which women themselves have too often been voiceless—a narrative instead written from the perspective of men who styled themselves as authorities on the female of the species, yet uninformed by women’s own voices, thoughts, fears, pain and experiences. The result is a cultural and societal leg­acy that continues to shape the (mis)treatment and care of women.

While the modern age has seen significant advancements in the medical field, the notion that female bodies are flawed inversions of the male ideal lingers on—as do the pervasive societal stigmas and lingering ignorance that shape women’s health and relationships with their own bodies.

Memorial Sloan Kettering oncologist and medical historian Dr. Elizabeth Comen draws back the curtain on the collective medical history of women to reintroduce us to our whole bodies—how they work, the actual doctors and patients whose perspectives and experiences laid the foundation for today’s medical thought, and the many oversights that still remain unaddressed. With a physician’s knowledge and empathy, Dr. Comen follows the road map of the eleven organ systems to share unique and untold stories, drawing upon medical texts and journals, interviews with expert physicians, as well as her own experience treating thousands of women.

Empowering women to better understand ourselves and advocate for care that prioritizes healthy and joyful lives— for us and generations to come—All in Her Head is written with humor, wisdom, and deep scientific and cultural insight. Eye-opening, sometimes enraging, yet always captivating, this shared memoir of women’s medical history is an essential contribution to a holistic understanding and much-needed reclaiming of women’s history and bodies.

©2024 Elizabeth Comen (P)2024 HarperCollins Publishers

Wow!

This book was an incredible education in how women have been treated in medicine over the centuries, and it has helped me understand why we are treated as we are today. It provides me the information and confidence to keep advocating for the care I need. Many thanks to the author who put an enormous amount of work into this book. I have recommended it to everyone I know. It’s an important book!

what I've always known.

This is a fantastic, thought out, well-researched collection of what a lot of us women already know. We've been being dismissed in the medical community for years. This puts it into greater perspective & I thoroughly enjoyed this listen.

women and health care

Wow! so very informative. came a long way but still a long way to go. With Roe v Wade overturned, I am scared for our women of all ages.

A Must read / listen for women & medical professionals

Loved the framework for the book, and the human narratives interwoven with history. Infuriating and eye opening. Audible narrator is awesome! Funny and snarky and empathetic.

All in my head

This was excellent and eye opening. I saw myself in several of these chapters and examples. I often go w out care not because I don’t have health care access but because I assumed certain aspects of being a woman included discomfort and challenges. I will be sure to talk to my daughter about her health in a way my mother never did. She didn’t know.. just like I didn’t until now

Impressively persuasive and intelligent

The content was incredible and the story teller was amazing. Truly provided the underlying truth and feeling. I cannot emphasize enough how excellent this is to provide women with an understanding about how others have viewed their bodies.

Fascinating and eye opening

So grateful to the author for making this knowledge available. A must read for any woman with a body.

Good, but…

As an Anatomy and Physiology instructor, I was aware of the lacking history of anatomical and medical research and understanding with regard to women. This goes into that and highlights some of the egregious examples. The vignettes are especially powerful. But I was hoping for more from the systems based approach. Perhaps because of the holes in research it felt, at times, redundant and a bit shallow. But overall, I would recommend this book. The performance was excellent. And it certainly held my interest. I think many of us can see ourselves in these stories. Our symptoms overlooked or dismissed as normal or inevitable.

Read and discuss with others

I read this with friends for a book club-- and highly recommend doing that with this book!! This book has so much historical and current situations women have and are experiencing with their health that are shocking and terrifying to read about. Each chapter continues to build too and focuses on different aspects of the body. I thought chapter nine was the most interesting. There’s so much to digest in this book and it is good for all people to be informed about. That is why I recommend reading this with others or at least talking with someone while you read it. It helps to break that crystallization we have around talking about these topics.

Timely and important—an amazing read

This is a timely story, as women’s healthcare is restricted, of the history and its impact on the current day.