This article on Freebleeding is really interesting

[Mignonette]

Freebleeding - why is this taboo when images of violence, sex and repression are not?

Or should we see menstruation as nothing more than a process of excretion and attach no special significance to it?

[ChrisTheSheep]

Nowt to do with me!

[NiceTabard]

But people did have loads of kids before the industrial revolution.

If they survived the births they had loads.

As they do generally in places where poverty, a lack of access to birth control and education etc are the case.

I am not sure how /when this herbal contraceptive & birth planning was going on. Pre-christian times I'm guessing? That is kind of a long time before where we were looking & also harder to know what went on?

[NiceTabard]

I think maybe religion has a lot to do with no. of kids.

And PATRIARCHY!!!!

[Grennie]

In Roman times there was a herb that was supposed to be such an effective contraceptive, that it became extinct.

[NiceTabard]

lol

[Alisvolatpropiis]

Anal sex was practised as a form of contraceptive historically as well.

I think generally speaking, there may have been more births and babies than there are now but far fewer babies living to be children and children to be adults.

[ChrisTheSheep]

Wrt the Fanny Hill discussion earlier, there's an interesting essay by John Sutherland where he suggests that, as well as being used to fake virginity in racy novels, sponges (often soaked in alcohol) were used as a contraceptive device. I'm bit sure how common this was, but I know I've read about it in a pamphlet from the 1820s. Interestingly, said pamphlet was aimed at working class women.

[ChrisTheSheep]

"Not sure". Stupid autocorrect.

[GarlicReturns]

Tabard, folk remedies to trigger abortion have been known for ever, and still are. When they failed, there was a knitting needle. This is up until the Abortion Act of 1967, nothing to do with pre-christianity!

I've been reading some contemporary studies of fertility and working women in the 18th & 19th centuries. One was from the North of England, in an agricultural community. The majority were sub-fertile due to malnutrition. Perinatal infant mortality was very high, with fewer than half of live births reaching 1 year old. The second study concerned teenage girls working the mines in Devon. They came from families of around 10 children, however the girls themselves were quite ill and did not go on to have large families of their own. Their mothers had not been miners; most seem to have been employed in lace-making, a domestic industry. This was in the 19th century, just before legislation was passed against women & children working underground at the mines.

Servants were fired if they got pregnant, certainly in my Gran's time and I'm guessing up to WW2.

[GarlicReturns]

Yes, Chris, they used a sponge soaked in vinegar. They also used to douche with vinegar after sex.

[Mignonette]

Generally if you fall below seven stone with attendant malnutrition, menstruation ceases. You also need to hit that weight marker at puberty to be menstrually active.

There are exceptions but these are healthy women with a lower body weight.

[Mignonette]

Posted too soon.

Clary sage was an abortificant I believe.

I have also heard of seaweed being used in Japan as sanitary protection. It was mixed with other ingredients, made into a stiffened mastic mass, dried in sheets and used to protect clothing although I cannot imagine how it worked effectively.

Will try to dig out the reference.

[WoTmania]

I'm happy to be corrected but I've always understood that in 'the past' most women tended to have less periods over their lifetime in part due to a) poor nutrition meaning they started menstruating later and had periods without any b) if they did get pregnant and have a live birth they tended to have the effect of lactational amenorrhea for longer, again often due to poor nutrition.

I should clarify my previous post: I wasn't suggesting that women were very frequently pregnant but that they had longer breaks from menstruation due to elements I've mentioned above.

[WoTmania]

Also didn't women use pieces of cloth/rags to catch the blood?

[DuskAndShiver]

WoT I think a lot of people are saying that you can't use rags if you don't have pants with a crotch. This is not true, you can effectively hold small things, without putting them inside, without a garment with a crotch. For a few hours or a day anyway, which for some is all you need, as people also wore very voluminous things. Heavy bleeding is different from the odd smear which would be easily unnoticeably absorbed unless you are wearing the tight white jeans of 80s sanpro adverts.

I guess I am still saying that it seems to me that it is not that menstruation mess in particular was more tolerated, just that it would be utterly unnoticeable in a sea of filth and grubby, muddy voluminous rarely washed fabrics

[AngelaDaviesHair]

Well, I bought tampons today in my lunch hour at Boots and noticed the assistant double-bagging my purchases so no poor delicate person would see what I'd bought and have conniptions in the street.

[Mignonette]

Angela

Wow - I guess she thought she was being thoughtful. I used to hide mine under other shopping and never go to a till with a man on.

I know i have an issue with it. I think I am done now and it is weird how very quickly it all receded for me. it feels like a lifetime away and not insiginificant that I can post about it now i am no longer affected by it. WTF is that about?

Also had no issues talking about it with patients.

[Mignonette]

I'm referring to menopause. Still talking in bloody euphemisms.

[ethelb]

This information on how women dealt with periods in the past is interesting as I have been trying to find out mote since I started using resusable cloth pads. However, i do remember being told that egyptians used papyrus to make tampons (as well as condoms) so there must have been some desire to contain menstrual blood.
That said there is the biblical story about the woman with the haemhorrage which people seemed to know about, so she cant have been using any sanpro

[AngelaDaviesHair]

Mig, DH unpacked my shopping last night and said 'What the hell is going on with all these bags in bags?' So I told him and he said 'What did she think was going to happen?' and also interestingly, guessed (correctly) she was not British.

Have you read Germaine Greer's book on the menopause? It was quite a thing when published, not least because there was a libel action over it too. I've got a copy and keep meaning to read it.

[Mignonette]

I'll look out for that Angela. I do remember the press blurb on it. When she is on form she writes beautifully- her new book on buying up some Australian Rainforest has some gorgeous writing in it.

I wonder what the libel action was about?

at your husband. He sounds like mine, a man who is not fazed by all aspects of being a woman.

[Grennie]

ethel - I wonder if there was a difference between well off egyptian women and slaves? Wouldn't be surprising if there was

[AngelaDaviesHair]

It was a result of a serious slag-off GG included in the book about a particular woman doctor.

[Mignonette]

Will go and hunt it out. Didn't Greer also write about the beauty of young boys or was that Camille Paglia?

[AngelaDaviesHair]

Both I think.

Not keen on GG as I've seen her on TV. But to really hear someone slate her, you have to get my mother going!