Tag: women’s health

In my very first job as a doctor, working in a London hospital in the 1980s, I always took a ridiculously detailed past medical history for every patient I saw. I started to notice how many elderly women had had septicemia, a life-threatening infection in which enormous amounts of bacteria enter the bloodstream. The neighborhood surrounding the hospital had once been the worst slum in London, and it didn’t take me long to guess that these infections were probably caused by illegal self-induced abortions during the hungry years of the Depression. When I asked–slowly, carefully, subtly–I was told some intensely personal and secret stories.