性別、科技與身體：子宮內膜異位症的興起與擴展，1950-2005

This thesis examines the history of the making of endometriosis as a disease for women from the 1950s to the present. Several aspects are important to this history, including the role of changing technology in diagnosis and treatment, the lived experiences of women who suffered from endometriosis, and gendered medical practices. This research is based on qualitative research, and it includes several interviews with gynecologist-obstetricians and women with endometriosis. In addition, written sources regarding endometriosis are also analyzed. Endometriosis first emerged in Taiwan in the 1950s, and beginning in the 1970s it gradually expanded as a result of various factors, including the advance of laparoscopy technology, popularized essays in the mass media, networks of patients’ self-help groups. The diagnosis and treatment of endometriosis changed profoundly with the development of laparoscopes. In the 1950’s, doctors diagnosed patients’ conditions by manual palpitation. If doctors could not make a diagnosis, they could only relieved patients’ symptoms by prescribing drugs. After the 1970s, diagnoses began to oriented toward instruments (i.e. laparoscopes), and the use of laparoscopy technology also became an important feature in gynecologist-obstetricians’ practice. As a result, women’s body experience increasingly lost its importance in diagnosing the disease, if not entirely ignored. In the period between 1970s and 1980s, medication was often prescribed following a diagnosis of the disease via laparoscopy. After operation laparoscopy was invented in the 1990s, diagnosis and treatment could be done at the same time. Not only does laparoscopy enable physicians to see the disease, but it also can be used to eliminate lesion. Many women who were unable to conceive could then hope for a chance of becoming pregnant. However, in order to treat sterility, many women undergo repeated medical procedures using the more convenient laparoscopic operation, which might be unnecessary. The advance of technology also resulted in “standardization” of the disease classification, which does not include pains. The seriousness of the disease is evaluated based on the extent to which it covers the reproductive organs, and whether or not one is cured is based on the elimination of sterility, which indicates that sterility is seen as the most important problem of this disease. In this way, women’s body is tied to reproduction. After the development of medical technology, although patients have more treatment options, and some women’s menstrual discomfort could be improved and infertility might be overcome, it is not completely favorable for women. In order to treat sterility, some women may put up with drugs and operations but their problems remain unsolved. Despite the fact that it takes two to be infertile, women are those who seek out for medical help first. It is not impossible that women with slight lesion might become the culprit of sterility, while their male partners could remain unsuspected. This study suggests that the medical community should not see women as the only source of the problem when it comes to sterility. Learning from the experiences of many endometriosis patients, we can rethink many issues concerning reproduction. It is clear that for many women, medicine is not the only solution.