I'm Dr. Zoe Williams and I'm currently stood in a reasonably quiet street in

London in front of an unassuming building and the reason I'm stood here is because there's a blue plaque on the wall and it reads Elizabeth

Garrett Anderson 1836 to 1917 the first woman to qualify as a doctor in Britain lived here.

And not only did she live here, but she also set up her first medical practice here.

Interestingly, she set it up in her home because nobody would let her work as a doctor

anywhere else. She was an absolute trailblazer. It's sad really and I'm sure she would be very

disappointed that over 150 years later

it's only now that we're starting to recognize and pick apart just how much women as

patients have been underserved by the medical profession.

Hello I'm Dr Zoe Williams, a general practitioner in the UK,

the equivalent of a primary care or family physician. in the

the equivalent of a primary care or family physician. And this is the documentary,

His and Hers Medicine, from the BBC World Service.

I've been aware for some time that the medical profession around the world as treated men and women as if they're the same both mentally and physically.

From the way medical students are taught

to the way doctors diagnose women and men and the way they then treat them.

But men and women's bodies are not the same and in this program I'm going to look at how

women have been suffering and sometimes dying because there's been no

understanding or acknowledgement of the fact that we are not just little men.

In history the male body was always used as the default body in the Americas and in Europe.

This is Dr Vera Reggitz-Zagrossek,

Professor of Cardiology at the University of Zurich,

...