Witchy Memes

Medicine has always assumed a male patient, which is why it's redundant to call something a men's hospital and why it's necessary to specify a women's health center. Women are the "other" under patriarchy, and men the default.

Women weren't even included in clinical trials in the US until 1993.

read more here:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women's_health

Simone de Beauvoir's Second Sex covers a lot of ground about women being the "other" in case you wanted more on that.

That's because western medicine is based on ancient Greek medicine, where women formed their own bodies of medicine for childbirth separate from the male doctors. The male doctors were HEAVILY involved in the military, so much of their medicine was written down and preserved. A lot of women's medicine did not survive the Dark Ages for this reason, so medicine as a default became synonymous with "men's medicine." That's also why the birthing position changed for women - men took over their medical jurisdiction over childbirth.

Of course, women have a lot more women specific health issues than men have men specific health issues, so it makes sense.

There are certain areas where, as I understand, women are less diagnosed when they should be compared to men (e.g. heart conditions), but in other areas both men and women face a doctor shrugging and moving on rather than arriving at a diagnosis.