The purpose of this book is to consider the woman and her health needs in her position in her life cycle, her family, and society. Women have historically been ‘‘the other’’ in medical care. Sigmund Freud and Erik Erikson considered women’s development to be deviant from the normal, which was men’s. Although the Greeks Hippocrates and Soranus wrote about women’s medical needs, women’s health concerns have either been considered abnormal, or, traditionally, been condensed to their gynecological functions and disorders, perhaps because these were their only valued functions
