ABSTRACT
By the late n ineteen th cen tury ideas abou t w om en’s health , increasingly an d p redom inan tly em anating from the m edical profession, h ad becom e pervasive in the definition an d legitim isation o f distinctive differences and divisions in gender roles w ith in society. H istorians w orking from fem inist an d o ther perspectives have rightly em phasised the centrality , even univer sality, o f m o th erh o o d an d rep roduction as the m ajo r organising them es and p reoccupation o f discussions ab o u t w om en an d h e a lth .1 Fem inist theory an d research , in particu lar, have dem onstra ted how , by the tu rn o f the century , these discussions took place w ith in a w ider physical an d cultural con tex t w here the fem ale body cam e to be seen as fundam entally ‘dis o rd e red ’.2 A pparently separate areas o f concern w ere connected by the cen tral focus upon the ‘d isordered’ fem ale body, w ith m otherhood, reproduction and, increasingly, sexuality as the key in terconnected com ponents o f gendered represen tations o f w om en’s health . T h e dom inance o f these them es reflects the pervasive voices o f the m edical profession, an d o f the m ale professional, in general: those w ho p ro d u ced the apparen tly au thorita tive sources u pon w hich historians have routinely d raw n during the ir research.
