A Darker Ribbon: Breast Cancer, Women, and Their Doctors in the Twentieth Century"At the heart of the book are two unpublished correspondences that dramatize the slow pace of change and the still-timely issues of patient disclosure, privacy, and informed consent. One is between a woman diagnosed with breast cancer eighty years ago and her surgeon, William Stewart Halsted, father of the radical mastectomy. The second features the letters of Rachel Carson, who was writing and defending her environmental classic Silent Spring as she was in the final stages of breast cancer. These letters are invaluable women's health history, and a poignant and inspirational record of Carson fighting her way out of the role of compliant patient to become instead an advocate for herself, her own "case manager" in the days before such a phrase had ever been coined."--BOOK JACKET. |
What people are saying - Write a review
A DARKER RIBBON: Breast Cancer, Women, and Their Doctors in the Twentieth Century
User Review - KirkusA cultural history of breast cancer that focuses primarily on how social acceptance of the unequal roles of men and women has impeded progress in a woman's disease. Leopold, a writer on women's health ... Read full review
A darker ribbon: breast cancer, women, and their doctors in the twentieth century
User Review - Not Available - Book VerdictBreast cancer strikes 182,000 American women annually, but public awareness of this disease is a recent phenomenon. Here, Leopold, a sociologist and a breast cancer survivor, examines the cultural ... Read full review
Contents
The Prehistory of Breast Cancer | 23 |
The Dominance of Surgery | 45 |
Part Two | 83 |
A Really Hideous Mutilation The Radical Mastectomy in the Correspondence of a Breast Cancer Patient and Her Surgeon William Stewart Halsted 19... | 85 |
A Little Private Hell The Letters of Rachel Carson and Dr George Crile Jr 196064 | 111 |
Part Three | 151 |
The Battle for the Breast | 153 |
Breast Cancer within the History of the Womens Health Movements | 188 |
From the Closet to the Commonplace 194575 | 215 |
At the Close of the Century | 243 |
Obituaries | 275 |
Notes | 285 |
| 317 | |
| 328 | |
Other editions - View all
A Darker Ribbon: Breast Cancer, Women, and Their Doctors in the Twentieth ... Ellen Leopold No preview available - 1999 |
Common terms and phrases
abortion American Cancer Society American women approach ASCC Barbara Mueller behavior Betty Betty Ford biopsy birth control breast cancer breast cancer patients breast disease breast self-examination campaigns cancer deaths Caulk century clinical course culture cure decades diagnosis doctors drug earlier early detection effect fact female feminists George Crile Halsted Halsted's hospital hysterectomies idea illness interest issue Krebiozen letter lives lymph nodes male malignant mammography medicine ment metastases mortality newly diagnosed nineteenth obituaries operation pain percent physicians possible practice prevention procedure professional Rachel Carson radiation radical mastectomy radical surgery rates reconstruction remained reproductive response revealed risk role Rose Kushner scientific screening sense sexual Silent Spring social story suffering surgeons surgery surgical survival swelling symptoms therapy tion tissue TRAM flap treated treatment for breast tumors William Stewart Halsted woman Women's Field Army women's health words York
Popular passages
Page 9 - from the end of the nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth.
Bibliographic information
| Title | A Darker Ribbon: Breast Cancer, Women, and Their Doctors in the Twentieth Century |
| Author | Ellen Leopold |
| Publisher | Beacon Press, 2000 |
| ISBN | 0807065137, 9780807065136 |
| Length | 334 pages |
| Subjects | › › Health & Fitness / Diseases / Cancer Health & Fitness / Women's Health |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |