The history of menstruation

While I do not deny that there are still various stigmas surrounding this natural process (which also seem to have been frozen in time since the Roman Empire), I wanted to devote a few lines to this evolutionary change and to the women who have been affected by it for more than half of our history on the planet.

Although there is not much information about the methods of female hygiene in ancient times, the first medical records date from 460-370 B.C., in classical Greece. These were written by Hippocrates, a renowned thinker who even today holds the title of the father of modern medicine. It was he, who first spoke of the bleeding period of women, in his book Corpus hippocraticum, which brought together several analytical writings on “women’s diseases.”

Hippocrates believed that menstrual blood was the product of the wasting of female body fluids. This theory was developed from the view that the woman was “defective” and imperfect because her basal temperature was very high and the interior of the body extremely moist. This was then the reason why the body urgently needed to excrete her blood. Similarly, the medical treatment and care of this “disease” was to become pregnant and/or marry in order to control the disease.

Although this may seem unusual and even unheard of, the vision of the Greek people was still somewhat that of the researcher who ventures conclusions but is still far from the end result. On the contrary, in the Roman Empire, dangerous motives were attributed to menstruation. Pliny the Elder published a book called Naturalis historia, in which he said that nothing was more powerful than menstrual blood, both for good and evil. He also promoted the idea that women should not see anyone for a few days because they could ruin fields, abort animals, turn wine into vinegar and other ills. This idea was also adopted in other cultures and religions, such as Judaism or Hinduism, to the point where women were segregated and ostracized even if they did not menstruate.

This created a complex and conflictual relationship between the woman and her own body, but how could she not have one? This thought lasted for many years, as menstruation and its reasons began to be studied in a more scientific way until the 19th century. In the next part of this blog, we will talk about the etymology of this word and the new view people began to take of it.