Includes bibliographical references and index

Introduction -- Skin (Integumentary: it's what's inside that counts) -- Bones (Skeletal: skulls and whalebones) -- Muscle (Muscular: who's the weakest of them all?) -- Blood (Circulatory: matters of the heart) -- Breath (Respiratory: perhaps women breathe different air) -- Guts (Digestive: the price of going (and not going) with your gut) -- Bladder (Urinary: a thousand years of holding it in) -- Defense (Immune: self-sabotage) -- Nerves (Nervous: the "bitches be crazy" school of medicine) -- Hormones (Endocrine: the hormone hangover) -- Sex (Reproductive: the mother of all moral panics) -- Conclusion -- Acknowledgments -- Index

For as long as medicine has been a practice, women's bodies have been treated like objects to be examined and ignored, idealized and sexualized, shamed, subjugated, mutilated, and dismissed. The notion that female bodies are flawed inversions of the male ideal lingers on, as do the pervasive societal stigmas and ignorance that shape women's health and relationships with their own bodies. The author draws back the curtain on the collective medical history of women to reintroduce us to our whole bodies: how they work, the actual doctors and patients whose perspectives and experiences laid the foundation for today's medical thought, and the many oversights that remain unaddressed. She examines the eleven organ systems to share unique and untold stories, drawing upon medical texts and journals, interviews with expert physicians, and her own observations from treating thousands of women