Healers and Patients Talk: Narratives of a Chronic Gynecological Disease (Hardback)

To tell the tale of endometriosis is to tell a tale of patients and doctors, of waiting for a diagnosis that, at last and at least, validates one's suffering as a medical condition, as opposed to being held in abeyance without it. It is to delve into the medical, sociological, and economic history of endometriosis, into myths of the female body, popular culture and its changing characterizations, and the psychology, for many women with endometriosis, of wearing the 'mask of health' while living with 'the monster inside.' In this book written by a physician-anthropologist with endometriosis, the tale is also an ethnographic exploration of the experiences of patients and doctors that breaks the silence about a disease which afflicts ten percent of women worldwide. Healers and Patients Talk is a high and distinguished achievement as a narrative and study, and it will, as Veronique A. S. Griffith states as her reason for writing it, help many women, and perhaps their doctors, achieve and arrive at better care for patients with endometriosis.--Michael Rowe, Yale University
Healers and Patients Talk makes a significant contribution to scholarly understandings of endometriosis and the gendered nature of chronic conditions more generally. This is, to date, the first ethnography of endometriosis, and the deployment of the ethnographic lens offers important new insights. Healers and Patients Talks provides rich data and rare insight into the clinical setting and the encounters between patients' and health professionals' varied and contested enactments of endometriosis.--Annalise Weckesser, Birmingham City University
Veronique Griffith approaches this ethnographic study of endometriosis from three separate but interlinked standpoints - as a medical doctor, a social science researcher, and as woman with endometriosis. This unique position has facilitated access to NHS clinics, to women with endometriosis, and to the emerging endometriosis advocacy movement. The resulting research brings new and important insights on the experience of endometriosis from NHS professionals, from women, from social media, and presents them in an accessible way. This book is a welcome addition to the endometriosis literature for those with a professional and personal interest in increasing understanding of this disease.--Elaine Denny, Birmingham City University