The Woman Beneath the Skin

A Doctor's Patients in Eighteenth-Century Germany

Barbara Duden

Translated by Thomas Dunlap

    In this provocative study, Barbara Duden asserts that the most basic biological and medical terms that we use to describe our own bodies--male and female, healthy or sick--are indeed cultural constructions. To illustrate this, Duden delves into the records of an eighteenth-century German physician who meticulously documented the medical histories of eighteen hundred women of all ages and backgrounds, often in their own words.
  • Cover: The Woman Beneath the Skin
  • A photo of the author

Barbara Duden has been on the faculty of the Science, Technology, and Society Program at Pennsylvania State University and is currently a Fellow at the Institute for Cultural Studies, Essen, Germany.