Beyond the Natural Body: An Archaeology of Sex Hormones

It is now impossible to imagine a world without sex hormones. Women all over the world take hormonal pills to control their fertility and estrogen and proges­terone have become the most widely used drugs in the history of medicine. But why has the female rather than the male body become increasingly subjected to hormonal treatment? Nelly Oudshoorn challenges the idea that there exists such a thing as a natural body and shows how concepts such as the hormonal body assume the appear­ance of n...