A powerful, taboo-shattering medical and social history that redresses the myths and delivers the truths about menopause Meticulously researched and always entertaining, this book traces the history of "the change of life" from its appearance in classical texts and the medical literature of the 18th century to up-to-the-minute contemporary clinical approaches. For more than 2,000 years, attitudes to menopause have created dread, shame, and confusion. Its progression from natural phenomenon to full-blown pathological condition led to bizarre treatments and often dangerous surgery, and formalized a misogyny which lingers in the treatment of menopausal women today. Delving into the archives, the boudoir, and the doctor's bag, this book reveals the elements that formed the menopause myth: chauvinism, collusion, trial, error, and secrecy. Absurd assumptions that have persisted through history are challenged here, such as the idea that sex stops at menopause, or that aging should be feared.
Author
Louise Foxcroft read History at the University of Cambridge as a mature student in the early 1990s. In 2007 she published an academic title, The Making of Addiction: The ‘use and abuse’ of opium in nineteenth-century Britain (Ashgate), which developed the research of her PhD thesis. This was followed by her first general book, Hot Flushes, Cold Science: A History of the Modern Menopause (Granta, 2009) which ranked as Amazon’s No.1 History of Medicine title for some weeks. Broadly as Medical Historian, she has specialised in medical perceptions of the human body and at the way these are related to present day, personal, human experience - this makes for some really in-depth questions and analyses, not to mention the absurdities, of how we live our lives now. An occasional supervisor at the University of Cambridge, Louise Foxcroft has also written for The London Review of Books, The Guardian, New Humanist, Erotic Review, Daily Mail and The Times, and has been a guest on several BBC Radio programmes. As a Non-Alcoholic Trustee on the General Service Board of Alcoholics Anonymous GB since 2006 she has been working on AA literature, and speaking at conferences and press events, both national and international.
