A History of Hormones and Blood Clots

Indiana University, Bloomington IN

Investigators

Abstract

This historical project will study the role of blood clotting disorders in the development of the medicine for women. It will explore the role of the body in the development of medical theory and practice. The work will be of interest to medical advocates, citizens, doctors, and public health workers. The study will provide findings that may improve doctor-patient relationships, research methods, roles of bodies in research and development, and public health activism. The project will document the story of the development of the pill by looking at how the science was built upon the knowledge of what caused blood clots to form and how they moved throughout the body. The study will explore perceptions of risk and the asymmetry of risk by tracing the active agents in shaping pathological thought on venous blood clotting in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and ideas about hormonal contraception and its risks in the twentieth century. The project will use archival materials from pathologists, patients, and drug developers in order to trace the history of hormones and clotting risks. It will illustrate the many contributions of the patients and physicians involved in this research on blood clotting from the 18th- 20th centuries.