#95844
Mentioned in 1 episodes
Female Complaints
Book • 1979
Sarah Stage's 'Female Complaints' examines the intersection of gender, medicine, and commerce in nineteenth-century America through the story of Lydia Pinkham and her famous patent medicine.
The book explores how cultural assumptions about women's bodies and suffering shaped medical practice and the market for remedies.
Stage analyzes advertising, correspondence, and medical debates to reveal how female pain was understood and monetized.
Her work highlights the social and economic forces that allowed patent medicines to flourish and the ways women navigated limited medical options.
The book situates Pinkham's compound within broader histories of consumer culture and the professionalization of medicine.
The book explores how cultural assumptions about women's bodies and suffering shaped medical practice and the market for remedies.
Stage analyzes advertising, correspondence, and medical debates to reveal how female pain was understood and monetized.
Her work highlights the social and economic forces that allowed patent medicines to flourish and the ways women navigated limited medical options.
The book situates Pinkham's compound within broader histories of consumer culture and the professionalization of medicine.
Mentioned by
Mentioned in 1 episodes
Mentioned by 
Tim Harford
36 snips
On patent medicines (with Tim Harford)
