Welcome to Season 4 of Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

I'm Josh Sharfstein, Vice Dean for Public Health Practice and Community Engagement, and a former Commissioner of Health in Baltimore City.

Our goal is to bring

scientific evidence and experience to current topics in public health through engaging interviews

with scientists, community leaders, policy experts, public health officials, clinicians, and more.

If you have ideas or questions for us to cover, please email us at public health question at jhhhu.edu.

That's public health question at jhhu.edu for future podcast episodes.

Hi, I'm Lindsay Smith-Rogers, the producer of Public Health On Call.

Today I'm talking with Eleanor Clegghorn, PhD, the author of the book Unwell Women,

Misdiagnosis and Myth in a Manmade World. We talk about how misogyny and mythology were

baked into classical medicine, how some of these biases remain today, and what needs to be done

to create a more equitable health system for all people.

Let's listen.

Eleanor Claycorn, PhD, thank you so much for joining me today.

This book, Unwell Women, Misdiagnosis and Myth in a Manmade World is very ambitious.

It starts in ancient Greece.

It takes us through the dark ages in Europe,

talks about global advances in medicine through the late 19th century, women's suffrage,

the world wars, all the way up to COVID-19. So what has been a recurring theme throughout all of this

history? Thank you so much for having me, by the way. It's lovely to be here. I think a

recurring theme throughout all of this history has been that medicine has always been a system

of knowledge and power that throughout the centuries, since its inception in ancient Greece,

...