All in Her Head

Finalist for the 2025 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award USA Today Bestseller “All in Her Head accomplishes a remarkable feat of storytelling. By combining essential medical histories about women’s bodies with all the narrative propulsion of a medical thriller, Comen has written a must-read, compelling, and important book.”—Siddhartha Mukherjee, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Emperor of All Maladies and The Song of the Cell “Wow! This book will upend everything you thought you knew about your body while empowering you to make better decisions moving forward. Through storytelling, extensive research, and easy recommendations, Dr. Elizabeth Comen has given us all a priceless road map to reclaim our agency.”—Eve Rodsky, author of Fair Play A surprising, groundbreaking, and fiercely entertaining work of medical history that is both a collective narrative of women’s bodies and a call to action for a new conversation around women’s health. For as long as medicine has been a practice, women‘s bodies have been treated like objects to be practiced on: examined and ignored, idealized and sexualized, shamed, subjugated, mutilated, and dismissed. The history of women’s healthcare is a story in which women themselves have too often been voiceless—a narrative instead written from the perspective of men who styled themselves as authorities on the female of the species, yet uninformed by women’s own voices, thoughts, fears, pain and experiences. The result is a cultural and societal legacy of medical misogyny that continues to shape the (mis)treatment and care of women. While the modern age has seen significant advancements in the medical field, the notion that female bodies are flawed inversions of the male ideal lingers on—as do the pervasive societal stigmas and lingering ignorance that shape women’s health and relationships with their own bodies. Memorial Sloan Kettering oncologist and medical historian Dr. Elizabeth Comen draws back the curtain on the collective medical history of women to reintroduce us to our whole bodies—how they work, the actual doctors and patients whose perspectives and experiences laid the foundation for today’s medical thought, and the many oversights that still remain unaddressed. With a physician’s knowledge and empathy, Dr. Comen follows the road map of the eleven organ systems to share unique and untold stories, drawing upon medical texts and journals, interviews with expert physicians, as well as her own experience treating thousands of women. Empowering women with tools for patient advocacy to better understand ourselves and fight for care that prioritizes healthy and joyful lives— for us and generations to come—All in Her Head is written with humor, wisdom, and deep scientific and cultural insight. Eye-opening, sometimes enraging, yet always captivating, this shared memoir of women’s medical history is an essential contribution to a holistic understanding and much-needed reclaiming of women’s bodies and history. How has a legacy of medical bias shaped the care women receive today, and what can we do about it? A System-by-System Exploration: Journey through the eleven organ systems to understand how historical myths continue to impact everything from our bones to our brains. Gender Bias in Medicine: Uncover the shocking stories of how a male-centric view of medicine led to the misdiagnosis and mistreatment of women for centuries. The Stories of Doctors and Patients: Meet the actual physicians and patients whose experiences laid the foundation for today’s medical thought, illuminated by Dr. Comen’s own work with thousands of women. A Call to Action: Discover powerful, actionable strategies to advocate for yourself, ask the right questions, and reclaim your agency in a healthcare system that has too often been voiceless for women.