A Night to Surrender
“While doctors surely had good intentions to help their patients, very little was understood about the origins and spread of disease. The preferred treatments of the day—bleeding and purging—had little, if any, real benefit.
Women’s reproductive health presented an especially difficult puzzle, it seems. In researching Susanna’s character, I read several Regency and early Victorian case histories of young women diagnosed with “hysteria.” Their symptoms ranged from moodiness to muscle weakness, he...adaches to seizures. All manner of feminine complaints were attributed to irregular menstruation or some vague dysfunction of the reproductive organs. Prescribed treatments ranged from the standard bleeding and purging, to the application of pustule-inducing salves and leeches on . . . let’s just say, delicate areas.
It all made me extremely grateful for my twenty-first-century doctors. But even with the advances in modern medicine, today’s researchers are still striving to understand and cure diseases that affect tens of thousands of women each year.MoreLess
Women’s reproductive health presented an especially difficult puzzle, it seems. In researching Susanna’s character, I read several Regency and early Victorian case histories of young women diagnosed with “hysteria.” Their symptoms ranged from moodiness to muscle weakness, he...adaches to seizures. All manner of feminine complaints were attributed to irregular menstruation or some vague dysfunction of the reproductive organs. Prescribed treatments ranged from the standard bleeding and purging, to the application of pustule-inducing salves and leeches on . . . let’s just say, delicate areas.
It all made me extremely grateful for my twenty-first-century doctors. But even with the advances in modern medicine, today’s researchers are still striving to understand and cure diseases that affect tens of thousands of women each year.MoreLess
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