Summary:
Advances in the medical field created new problems for women. Already subverted by a patriarchal society, now women were subject to another master: the doctor. Medical treatment was another way to control women by disempowering them.
The professionalization of the medical field created new problems for women. Women were subject to the infinite power of male doctors. They were already prisoners in a patriarchal society and now they were subject to another master, the doctor. Medicine and other treatments controlled women by taking their limited power away from them. Mary Elizabeth Braddon's short story "Good Lady Ducayne" depicts an upper class woman literally preying on a lower-middle class girl without the girl's knowledge. Lady Ducayne's doctor, Parravicini, performs controversial blood transfusions to keep her young. Marlene Tromp discusses Braddon's critique of medical authority and emphasizes her point by including a quote from S. Weir Mitchell's novel Doctor and Patient: "No group of men so truly interprets, comprehends, and sympathizes with women as do physicians, who know how near to disorder and how.....
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