Medicine vs woman or the social construction of the imaginary disease: the medical discourse on chlorosis
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Abstract
In this paper I carry out an analysis of the process of construction of a medical discourse linked to the woman's body, the «disease» called chlorosis. The discourse about the clinic of this imaginary disease became so important that at the end of the 19th century that any woman could be easily diagnosed as chlorotic. Chlorosis became then a powerful medical instrument for social control on women, who in term, through a medically-oriented sexuality, transferred their dependence on the fatherly figure to their benefactor-husband. Likewise, I discuss the subversive effect, in the environment of a misogynist medical discourse, of the acceptance of a male chlorosis which could deprive the «disease» from its genuine gender condition.
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