Mentor: Lindsay Schakenbach Regele, Ph.D.

Experimentation and exploitation was commonplace in Nineteenth century medicine. Just shaking off the dust of miasma theory, scientists were eager to use the wonders of modern medicine to cure all diseases, including that of the mind. With female hysteria becoming an epidemic of melancholic mothers and nymphomanic daughters, doctors began claiming the removal of female sex organs would cure these undesirables. But were all surgeries created equal? In this research the acceptance of surgical cures to women’s mental health crises are compared within the scopes of American, Canadian, and British medical societies. It is explored why advocating for clitoridectomies resulted in Isaac Baker Brown’s removal from British medical society, yet Dr. R.M. Bucke was able to proceed in his work removing uteruses and ovaries. Why was it that these theories came to be, spanning all the way back to the Greco-Roman era? Additionally modern medical scholarship is explored as to why some of these women were in fact cured by these surgeries. This research provides an encompassing look at the lines drawn in the sand of surgical ethics when curing those with little to no agency, how removing one’s womanhood is only appropriate when a society of men agree on its necessity.

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