Contemporary medicine is based on "the assumption that there are so-called 'natural facts' which can be isolated and discovered and whose continuous discovery and accumulation has gradually created the state of knowledge we have today. In this way medical and scientific history becomes the story of how the 'real' body is 'discovered'"
Duden notes, however, that this can be seen as a "well-intentioned, professional distortion of the body" and that there is a "women's history" of "resistance" to this