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Bathsheba's breast : women, cancer & history /
"In 1967, an Italian surgeon touring Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum stopped in front of Rembrandt's Bathsheba at Her Bath, on loan from the Louvre, and noticed an asymmetry to Bathsheba's left breast; it seemed distended, swollen near the armpit, discolored, and marked with a distinctiv...
| Call Number: | Libro Electrónico |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic eBook |
| Language: | Inglés |
| Published: |
Baltimore :
Johns Hopkins University Press,
2002.
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Texto completo |
| Summary: | "In 1967, an Italian surgeon touring Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum stopped in front of Rembrandt's Bathsheba at Her Bath, on loan from the Louvre, and noticed an asymmetry to Bathsheba's left breast; it seemed distended, swollen near the armpit, discolored, and marked with a distinctive pitting. With a little research, the physician learned that Rembrandt's model, his mistress Hendrickje Stoffels, later died after a long illness, and he conjectured in a celebrated medical journal article that the cause of her death was almost certainly breast cancer." "In Bathsheba's Breast, historian James S. Olson - who lost his left hand and forearm to cancer while writing this book - provides an absorbing and often harrowing narrative history of breast cancer told through the heroic stories of women who have confronted the disease, from Theodora, Anne of Austria (Louis XIV's mother, she confronted "nun's disease" by perfecting the art of dying well), and Abigail "Nabby" Adams (the only daughter of President John Adams, who ministered to his dying daughter after her mastectomy failed to cure her cancer) to Rachel Carson, Betty Ford, and Dr. Jerri Nielsen, who was dramatically evacuated from the South Pole in 1999 after performing a biopsy on her own breast and self-administering chemotherapy. Olson explores every facet of the disease: medicine's evolving understanding of its pathology and treatment options; its cultural significance; the political and economic logic that has dictated the terms of a war on a "woman's disease"; and the rise of patient activism. Olson concludes that breast cancer has finally lost much of the stigma that, for millennia, has prevented women and men alike from sharing their experiences of this mysterious and deadly foe."--Jacket |
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| Physical Description: | 1 online resource (x, 302 pages) |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (pages 263-289) and index. |
| ISBN: | 0801876621 9780801876622 9780801869365 0801869366 |