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Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 56.2 (2001) 202-204



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Book Review

Body Talk:
Rhetoric, Technology, Reproduction


Mary M. Lay, Laura J. Gurak, Clare Gravon, and Cynthia Myntti, eds. Body Talk: Rhetoric, Technology, Reproduction. Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 2000. xiii, 308 pp. $60 (cloth), $24.95 (paper).

This volume’s title may not immediately attract the attention of historians of medicine. That would be unfortunate. Though only a few of the chapters deal directly with history, the studies presented can and should inform much of our own work. This rhetorical analysis of "body talk"—language that constructs bodies and reproductive technologies—enables us to identify authoritative knowledge; it shows that "discourse creates realities and perceptions, empowers and marginalizes certain voices, shapes bodies and technologies, and frames public policy" (p. 6). In other words, it documents the potency of language. Although this argument is not new, this volume provides a series of illuminating examples that highlight its power. [End Page 202]

One model is Martha Verbrugge’s "Gym Periods and Monthly Periods: Concepts of Menstruation in American Physical Education, 1900–1940," which examines the body talk of physical educators. Arguing that ideas and practices related to menstruation influence the ways women view their bodies, the development of employment and medical practices, and policy decisions relating to them, Verbrugge studies how secondary-school and college physical education instructors consciously used language to defend and recapture their authority to define normality, thus establishing their authority in the arena of women’s physicality and health. Published and unpublished works of physical educators, the programs they developed, and most especially the changing conditions under which high-school girls and college women were required to attend physical education classes, disclose how these instructors positioned themselves professionally. Biomedical models of menstruation emerging at this time legitimized medical intervention to control problems such as dysmenorrhea. Teachers remained committed to an older mechanical model, with its emphasis on proper dress, diet, exercise, and hygiene. This conception maintained the teachers’ professional authority, while weakening that of physicians.

In "Women’s Reproductive Choices and the Genetic Model of Medicine," Celeste M. Condit studies the rhetorical structure of the Human Genome Project’s presentations. Her careful analysis of the writing of Paul Berg, the Nobel Prize-winning geneticist and leading spokesperson for the project, describes his rhetorical strategy of simplification through which the primacy of the "gene" in human illness is established. Having not yet developed treatments for faulty genes, the only therapy available is genetic selection. Recognizing the rhetorical power of this argument to position women as the parties responsible for the health of their children, Condit urges us to promote a more comprehensive model of health and ill health, incorporating genes, environment, and nutrition, and to reshape medical institutions that provide women with genetic information and counsel.

Several chapters study infertility. Laura Shanner focuses on infertility clinics whose language, such as "ovarian failure," "girls," and the like, demeans and disempowers women, and makes them personally responsible for the situation. Elizabeth C. Britt’s study of 1987 Massachusetts legislation demonstrates how the legal system normalized the medical treatment of infertility by defining infertility as a medical condition and mandating insurance coverage for it.

Most of the other chapters in the book are more successful at analyzing rhetoric than documenting influence. Kathleen Marie Dixon provides a careful, detailed analysis of C. T. Avert’s 1957 study of "spontaneous and habitual abortion," in which he posits psychogenic theories of abortion. She places the publication in the context of contemporary medical thinking, [End Page 203] but she does not discuss its reception: Were others persuaded by his arguments? Chloé Diepenbrock postulates the power of repeated rhetoric. She finds that between 1977 and 1996, 52 percent of the articles on assisted reproduction published in leading women’s magazines were case narratives; they tell the stories of women who against all the odds ultimately attained the much-desired and glorified status of mother. While the chapter suggests that these articles normalized medical intervention in the...

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