The Woman Beneath the Skin

A Doctor's Patients in Eighteenth-Century Germany

Barbara Duden

Translator 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.