A Darker Ribbon: A Twentieth-Century Story of Breast Cancer, Women, and Their Doctors

Ellen Leopold

Beacon Press, Oct 17, 2000 - Social Science - 352 pages

The first cultural history of breast cancer, this book examines the social attitudes and medical treatments that together defined the modern relationship between women with the disease and their doctors. At the heart of the book are two unpublished correspondences-one between Barbara Mueller, a woman diagnosed with breast cancer eighty years ago, and her surgeon, William Steward Halsted, father of the radical mastectomy, and the other between Rachel Carson, who was writing Silent Spring as she was battling breast cancer, and her personal physician George Crile, Jr.

About the author

Ellen Leopold is a member of the Women's Community Cancer Project in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and has written breast cancer and women's health-care articles for The Nation, the Chicago Tribune, and the Boston Globe, among others.

Bibliographic information

• Title: A Darker Ribbon: A Twentieth-Century Story of Breast Cancer, Women, and Their Doctors
• Author: Ellen Leopold
• Publisher: Beacon Press, 2000
• ISBN: 0807065137, 9780807065136
• Length: 352 pages
• Subjects: Social Science / General