180cm. Left eye weak. Rashy, with a slight limp. History of melancholy, apocalyptic thinking, and neurosis. Weak lumbar spine unsuitable for major housework. Husband to be pitied.

If a 19th-century physician were taking notes on me, this is how I might’ve been committed to paper. And possibly also to an institution.

Harsh? Sure. But this was also pretty standard parlance for early physicians. Even doctors operating in the early 1900s like gynecologist Robert Frank were shockingly editorial. Frank made early studies of “premenstrual tension”—what today we’d term PMS—and published his findings along with a helpful chart summing up each patient’s main complaint. Among my favorite of his scientific findings are patient F.B., 41 years old and an “unbearable shrew,” while 47-year-old old LH. was “impossible to live with.” 

But this goes far beyond catty medical notes. 

Throughout history, women have been referred to as “monstrous” and “hysterical,” no different from animals and no more capable than children. It’s textbook dehumanization, broader and more violent versions of which we can trace across the Colonial projects in Africa, Asia, and the Americas through to Nazi Germany and contemporary violence in Gaza and Sudan. How we talk about people can normalize persecution, define how much credence is given to a person’s pain, and make it easier to overlook brutal means if they justify favorable ends. Who cares if an unknown “shrew” or an enslaved girl, her humanity already under suspicion, is subjected to major surgery without anesthesia or the basic courtesy of sterilized tools? 

Cultural historian Elinor Cleghorn cares, and it’s why she wrote Unwell Women: Misdiagnosis and Myth in a Man-Made World.

There is a lot that we don’t know about the women whose experiences form the basis of modern medicine, so Dr. Cleghorn set out to piece together what we do. She braids together this history through the experiences of women who were unwell, honoring the suffering and sacrifice behind medical innovation. Unfurling in ancient Greece and stretching to the recent past, her work offers a window into why women’s pain still isn’t taken seriously, even in 2026, and how recent incursions on women’s freedom look a lot more like a sloppy remix than progress.

For our very first episode of Simplify in its new, independent era, I got to speak with Elinor Cleghorn about the myths that shape women’s medical history and what that means for us today. 

As I read in preparation for our talk, I learned a lot that surprised me—the eugenicist roots of mainstream birth control and the pervasive ancient stories still defining how we think about women’s bodies are just the tip of the forceps.

Reading Unwell Women and getting to speak with Dr. Cleghorn made me feel more intimate with my own body and with collective feminine history. Regardless of how you identify, listen for a fascinating new perspective on the modern medical interventions we take for granted and a wakeup call to the ways in which bodily sovereignty is being challenged today. 

I’m so glad to be back. More soon,

Caitlin

P.S. Please share with a friend you think will enjoy this episode. It’s the best way you can help Simplify stick around! Also, let me know what you thought of the episode by replying here or writing to me and Ben at [email protected]. 

Oh! And now you can follow the show on instagram at @simplifypod, where I’m trying to share good bits and get over my fear of being videoed.