Women suffering

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Women's suffering is a historical name for all problems and diseases that affected women; it was for menstrual pain , irregular bleeding , abdominal pain , but also headaches and migraines , menopausal symptoms such as hot flashes and menopause , even for asthma and simple breathing problems , skin diseases and so forth.

history

The female body and its functions have long been tainted with myths and taboos . Women should neither wash themselves during their menstrual period nor eat certain foods (e.g. red or black), as this could lengthen or intensify the menstruation.

According to the ideas of ancient medicine , the uterus was pervaded by a blood vessel system that connected it to the entire body. It was assumed that "excess" menstrual blood that did not drain away would collect in the body, stagnate and lead to abscesses . It was also assumed that the uterus could move freely and therefore change its position and wander around the entire body. This view was held by Hippocrates , Paracelsus , Galenus and Leonardo da Vinci . Ultimately, they went back to corresponding theories of ancient Egyptian medicine. In the Corpus Hippocraticum one could read: “The uterus is to blame (in women, erg.) For all diseases.” Plato wrote in a treatise: “The uterus is an animal that ardently longs for children. If it remains sterile for a long time after puberty , it becomes angry, permeates the whole body, clogs the airways, inhibits breathing and (...) causes all kinds of diseases. "

Galenos also believed that the absence of menstruation or suppressed vaginal secretions led to hysteria in women , which was a generic term for various symptoms and included various mental disorders now known as depression , anxiety , schizophrenia, or psychosis .

The healer and mystic Hildegard von Bingen was one of the first scholars to separate gynecology from superstition and to declare " gynecological problems" to be a medical field for which there were therapeutic methods of treatment.

In the 18th century a new theory about the cause of female complaints and a new name came up, namely vapeurs (French literally vapors ). Meyers encyclopedia the importance explains the late 19th century as follows: "earlier designation of a fashion disease of women, allegedly by ascending to the brain bloating discomfort caused and based on it (hysterical) whims." The medical ideas of the 18th century are the oekonomische encyklopädie of Johann Georg Krünitz again: "the Vapeurs usually show up at Frauenzimmern on entering or while staying away normally, but also in many seats, eating blähender food, and not associated digestive powers of the stomach, etc., they go from the plexus of the abdomen from (...) ".

In the 19th century doctors feared that the strong lacing the corset to positional changes of internal organs and a Schnürleber lead. The theory of vapeurs was abandoned, but medicine continued to adhere to the idea that the female reproductive organs were directly connected to other organs and the brain by nerves . "The sexual apparatus of women is extraordinarily rich in nerves and at the same time has very extensive (...) relationships with the organs of the intestinal canal, the heart and the brain, insofar as it is the seat of the psyche . Accordingly, pathological conditions of the genitals are transferred to these organs via the nervous reflex and are documented here as upsets and dysfunctions of various kinds. In the broadest sense, a good part of the nervous and emotional disorders known as hysteria also belong to the area of ​​women's diseases. "

The recommended treatments for female hysteria used to be whimsical to drastic. Until the 1930s, immediate marriage and pregnancy were recommended as the common treatment method . A possible and well-used treatment method later led to the development of the vibrator . In gynecology , surgical interventions such as correcting the position of the uterus or a hysterectomy have increasingly been used as supposed therapy since the end of the 19th century . Increasingly, however, the ovaries were also seen as the cause of "hysteria", which for this reason were often surgically removed without any further findings.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Sigmund Freud initiated a comprehensive psychological investigation of mental illnesses, attributing many causes (probably still under the influence of old medical ideas) mainly to sexual problems. But he was one of the first - also under the influence of the Franco-Prussian War and the first conscious awareness of war-traumatized soldiers - to diagnose mental illnesses not only in women.

See also

literature

  • Britta-Juliane Kruse: The medicine is worth gold. Medieval women recipes. De Gruyter, 1999, ISBN 3-11-014703-3 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gunhild Buse, "... as if I had lost a treasure chest". Hysterectomy from the perspective of feminist-theological medical ethics, Berlin 2003, p. 139.
  2. ↑ Stavros Mentzos, Hysterie: On the Psychodynamics of Unconscious Staging, Göttingen 2004, p. 31.
  3. ↑ Stavros Mentzos, Hysterie: Zur Psychodynamik Unconscious Staging, Göttingen 2004, p. 33.
  4. ^ Meyers Konversations-Lexikon : Vapeurs , Volume 19. Leipzig 1909, p. 1007.
  5. ↑ Johann Georg Krünitz, Economic Encyclopedia : Vapeurs , Volume 203, (1850)
  6. ^ Meyers Konversations-Lexikon: Frauenkrankheiten , Volume 7. Leipzig 1907, pp. 42–43.
  7. ↑ Gunhild Buse, "... as if I had lost a treasure chest". Hysterectomy from the perspective of feminist-theological medical ethics, Berlin 2003, p. 156 ff.