The New York Times Book Review called a published book by Asti Hustvedt, "aspect[s] of pornography masquerading as intellectual inquiry." Charcot had paintings and photographs taken of his "patients" who he induced hysteria. Hustvedt collected these works into a book called Medical Muses which you can sell your soul away for $26.95.
I would say that these images don't come cheap, but I would be lying. These women were very easily obtained because they were women who had "been committed, often for life, to a warehouse for not only the mad, but also the homeless, the pregnant, and unwed, and others who refuse to abide by the conventions of a stifling society". Mind you as the article also states these would be the women who, way back when would be tried as witches.
Something for me, that also comes to mind for book junkies are "A Dolls House" by Henrik Ibsen, "A Streetcar Named Desire", and Girl Interrupted.
These male, white, educated, wealthy doctors would experiment on "diseased, uneducated and lower-class women", that seems fair right...
One of the best quotes to take away from this article would be that the "condition of being a woman as one that can at any moment veer out of control and is therefore in need of medical regulation"
So watch out ladies the Ovary Compressor is coming for you. Charcot had such an interesting revelation that if he shoved a metal clamp up your vagina you would freak out or get hysterical, hm, what a smarty pants.
Charcot died in 1893. Taking with him, we hope his love for compressing ovaries and his misogynistic view of females.
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