(dehumanisation of gynaecology)
Gynaecologists, or "female butchers" as they were called, competed to see who could cut out the uterus faster, deliver a baby with forceps or remove a cyst. It happened that the demonstration of operations and the skilful use of the scalpel were more for the fame of the doctors than for the health of the patients, who all too often ended up in the cemetery. When doctors appeared who wanted to relieve their patients, they were ridiculed, lost their licence to practise and were taken to court. Others were wanted to be hanged. Conservatives cried out that women should give birth in pain. And that the medical examination should be decent and the doctor should wear a special blindfold. The forerunners of modern diagnostics did not have it easy.
Jürgen Thorwald speaks out against doctors for the first time. He does not spare a bitter word for those who put the teachings of the Church above the health of their patients, often contradicting not only medicine but also common sense, but writes mainly about those who were the first to relieve the pain of childbirth, treat fistulas and cancer, those who reduced the mortality rate in childbirth, invented the caesarean section and the cytological examination, those who prevented a simple examination from ending in complications and inflammation, and those to whom we owe the whole range of contraceptives today.
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