Menstruation: A Cultural History (review)

In the case of Menstruation: A Cultural History, the cliché is true: a collection of essays often makes an uneven book. These nineteen chapters are arranged in two sections. The scope of topics in the first, "Science and Medicine," sweeps from Hippocratic medicine to theories and treatments of medieval China medicine to twentieth-century embryology and agriculture; the subjects of the second, "Myth and Culture," are equally broad, encompassing Greek mythology, vampires, and fairy tales through the literature of India, of Shakespeare, and of eighteenth-century England, to the marketing strategies of twentieth-century manufacturers. The variety of approaches is equally broad, ranging through the theories of Foucault and Aristotle, close textual analysis, Freudian psychoanalysis, anthropology, ethnography, and film studies to the more typical sources of histories of science, medicine, and technology, such as advice books and case histories. With such diversity, it is difficult to identify the likely audience for this volume. That said, however, many readers of the Journal will find different chapters of interest. In this short review, I will highlight those that I found particularly insightful.

Much of the historical research has dealt with negative aspects of menstruation: as pollution, as disability, leading to hysteria, and the like. Several essays in this volume show that menstruation was not always conceived in these terms. For example, Hippocratic physicians called menstruation katharsis, translated as "purification." Previous scholars have taken this to mean that the processes of the female body were pathological and in need for treatment. In Luigi Arata's interpretation, lack of menstrual flow was the disorder and katharsis must occur to maintain a woman's health (18). This casts a more positive light on menstruation than normally assumed. Similarly, menstruation is discussed in affirmative terms in Sabine Wilms' explication of medieval Chinese medicine. Dianne E. Jenett studies the poetry of South India, uncovering connections between menstruation, divinity, and women-focused rituals. In doing so, she too reveals a culture that, unlike the Western world, attributes positive qualities to menstruation. In particular, women's bodies were considered especially potent in ananku (divine vivifying female power) at menarche, during menstruation, and after childbirth (176).

Even in Western medicine, there is no one description or explanation for menstruation. Monica Green's essay on medieval Western Europe claims that menstruation was the symbol of female difference: "Serving as a marker both of female fecundity and female physicality" (52).

For scholars of the period, menstruation was not limited to reproductive processes but rather was considered a physiological function of the entire female body. Green discusses the various philosophies—Aristotelian, Galenic, Plinian and the like, and religious traditions—Islamic, Judaic, and Christian—that provided different, often conflicting views of the subject. Bettina Bildhauer's discussion of the medieval text Secrets of Women and Cathy McCline's analysis of early modern French medical practice add complexity to any presentation of the history of menstruation. Taking a wider view of the early modern period, Michael Stolberg dissects three contemporary humoral models of menstruation: the cathartic, the plethoric, and the iatrochemical, demonstrating how these related to theories of sexual difference.

Authors delving into the more recent past utilize other sources. Julie-Marie Strange uses case records from lunatic asylums and finds that nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century British medical practice viewed menstruation as physical illness with implications for mental health. For a similar era, Helen Blackman investigates how histological animal studies shaped thinking about menstruation. The idea of menstruation as a hormonal disorder and an evolutionary abnormality emerges in the mid- to late-twentieth century. In a most intriguing essay, Zahra Meghani demonstrates how the fearful prospect of a global population explosion fostered calls for menstruation-suppression drugs for all women not actively seeking a pregnancy. Other scientists supported menstruation suppression because they believed that menstruation led to iron-deficiency anemia and the potentially socially debilitating PMS (pre-menstrual syndrome). Meghani skillfully delineates the cross-currents of scientific research, concerns for population growth, and interest in women's health...