A Curious History of Sex

French Letters, English Raincoats and Mrs Phillips’s Wares ^{A History of the Condom}

Despite condoms providing the most effective protection against both pregnancy and STIs, they do come in for a ribbing. Even in countries where they are freely available, many people regard them as a necessary evil, and some don’t use them at all. In 2017, a YouGov survey of 2,007 sixteen- to twenty-four-year-olds in the UK found that almost half (47 per cent) of sexually active young people reported having sex with a new partner for the first time and not using a condom. And one in ten sexually active eighteen- to twenty-five-year-olds reported they had never used a condom.^{1} In 2017, there were 7,137 cases of syphilis reported in England, a 20 per cent increase from 2016, and a shocking 148 per cent increase from 2008. Gonorrhoea is also on the increase in the UK, with 44,676 diagnoses reported in 2017, a 22 per cent increase from 2016.^{2}

I get it. Condoms can be fiddly, they can dull sensation, and they can make the penis look like a clingfilmed bratwurst. But surely a dose of the clap or an unexpected pregnancy are even worse than any of these, so why are some people still so reluctant to wrap it up? I suspect one of the reasons is that antibiotics and antiviral drugs have thankfully provided us with something of a safety net. Of course, if left untreated gonorrhoea and chlamydia can cause infertility, herpes is not curable and HIV remains life-changing (though not necessarily life-threatening with the right medication). I don’t mean to minimise the damage of STIs, but I do want to point out that if caught early, the majority of infections require nothing more than a course of antibiotics and a few awkward phone calls with previous partners. This is a luxury our ancestors never had.

But this might not be the case for much longer. So-called ‘super gonorrhoea’, a multi-drug-resistant strain of the disease, is on the rise, and incidents of antibiotic resistance in both chlamydia and syphilis have been reported.^{3} If alternative treatments aren’t found, we could find ourselves back in a pre-antibiotic world of STIs, and that’s not a pretty place.

For as long as people have been having sex, there have been methods of preventing pregnancy and disease by covering the penis during intercourse. Evidence of such practice is found throughout the Ancient World.[33] For example, the legend of King Minos of Crete, told by Antoninus Liberalis sometime around the second century AD, tells how his queen, Pasiphae, could not conceive because the king’s semen was riddled with scorpions and serpents. King Minos was advised to have intercourse with another woman, but to place a goat’s bladder inside her vulva to catch his poisoned seed. Once the king had got it out of his system (so to speak), he was free to make love to his wife and produce a clutch of healthy, scorpion-free babies.^{4} Technically, this is a reference to what we might today call a female condom, rather than a male condom, but it does demonstrate a knowledge of using animal membrane sheaths to prevent exchange of sexual fluids.

Linen sheaths about the length of a finger, with strings to fix them in place, were discovered in the tomb of the boy Pharaoh Tutankhamun who ruled Egypt from c. 1332 to 1323 BC.^{5} Today these sheaths are exhibited in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo as ‘condoms’, which would make them the earliest known example of condoms in the world.^{6} However, it is by no means certain that these items were condoms, and they may have been some kind of ritual dress instead. Nor is there any other corroborating evidence of condom use in Ancient Egypt, though there is plenty of evidence to suggest birth control was practised. The Kahun Medical Papyrus (c. 1825 BC), for example, doesn’t mention condoms but does recommend a contraceptive pessary made from crocodile dung and honey, which would be inserted into the vulva before sex.^{7} Interestingly, this concoction might actually have worked as a spermicide due to the high acidic levels, but please don’t try this at home.

The earliest firm evidence we have of venereal protection that resembles a condom is found in the work of Italian physician Gabriele Falloppio (1523–1562). Falloppio was one of many physicians desperately trying to fight the advance of syphilis across Europe in the sixteenth century.[34] Falloppio understood that the ‘French Disease’, as he called it, was sexually transmitted and he devised a fabric sheath that fitted around the glans of the penis to prevent transmission. Falloppio’s sheath was to be soaked in a mixture of wine, mercury, ashes, salt and wood shavings. Crucially, Falloppio instructed this wrap be applied after sex; he does not suggest attempting to keep this in place during sex. The theory was that his wrap would cleanse the penis of infection. Falloppio boldly claimed he had instructed over a thousand soldiers in how to use his condom and none of them contracted syphilis.^{8} As Falloppio’s wrap was designed to be used after sex, it was certainly useless, but it is one of the earliest known accounts of wrapping the penis to prevent infection.

Other sixteenth-century ‘treatments’ for syphilis included steaming and fumigation, guaiacum wood (ground up and drunk, or rubbed into the skin), and, of course, mercury – ingested, injected or applied directly to the sores. Mercury had been used to treat skin lesions since Guy de Chauliac advocated its use to cure scabies in 1363.^{9} It may have been effective in burning away syphilitic lesions, but it is also highly toxic, causing all manner of neurological problems, as well as swollen gums, rotting teeth and hair loss.

Why would anyone be willing to suffer such hideous treatment? Because the disease itself was even worse. Italian surgeon Giovanni da Vigo (1450–1525) described the progression of syphilis in his 1514 work, De Morbo Gallicus.

In its later stages, syphilis attacks the brain, the soft tissues of the face and causes lesions to form on the bones. It is a truly horrific disease and one that was rightly feared. Useless as they were, when considering the alternative one can see the appeal of Falloppio’s condoms.

Soon, sheaths made of animal guts that were to be worn during coitus replaced Falloppio’s linen precautions.[35] These early condoms were usually made from sheep guts, though sheaths made from fish bladders were also used. The gut would be cut to size and dried out, and required soaking in milk or water to rehydrate it. They were then fastened on the penis with a ribbon or string, and then washed out after use and reused – several times.

The treatment process of turning sheep intestine into a condom is described in Robley Dunglison’s New Dictionary of Medical Science and Literature (1833).

It would have been condoms such as these that our favourite libertine John Wilmot, the Earl of Rochester wrote about in a celebratory pamphlet titled A Panegyric upon Cundum (1667). Being a thoroughly debauched scoundrel, Rochester was thrilled at the prospect of being able to have sex with as many ‘creature[s] obscene’ as he could handle without risking either the ‘tormenting sores’ or ‘the big belly and the squalling brat’.

Rochester could have certainly used a ‘well-made cundum’, as he died in 1680, riddled with syphilis and covered in lesions and sores, aged just thirty-three.

The Scottish biographer James Boswell (1740–1795) also placed his faith in the sheep-gut condom to protect him from venereal disease during his considerable sexual exploits. Boswell refers to condoms in his diary as ‘machines’, ‘sheaths’ or his ‘armour’.[36]

One of the many drawbacks about the sheep-gut condom was that it dried out between uses and needed to be soaked to make it malleable enough to fit over the penis. In one diary entry dated 4 June 1763, Boswell describes frantically dipping it in the canal before he could have sex with a ‘low Brimstone’ he picked up in the park. Despite the setback, Boswell maintained that he had ‘performed most manfully’.^{14} Manful he may have been, but lucky he was not. Despite his armour, Boswell contacted gonorrhoea at least nineteen times.^{15} In his diary, he referred to the repeated infection as ‘Signor Gonorrhea’.^{16} Despite their popularity, these early condoms may actually have helped to spread venereal disease as their users believed themselves to be safe and didn’t take any further precautions.

Condoms were big business in the eighteenth century, as both a contraceptive and a prophylactic. If you needed condoms in eighteenth-century London, you would most likely go to the Green Canister on Half Moon Street and ask either Mrs Phillips or her successor, Mrs Perkins, for one of their ‘fine machines’.^{17}

The British exported their condoms around the world, and although the Brits referred to them as ‘French letters’, elsewhere they were known as ‘English raincoats’.^{18} The great lover Casanova (1725–1798) calls condoms ‘redingote anglaise’ (‘English riding coat’) or ‘vêtement anglais qui met l’âme en repos’ (‘English clothing that brings peace to the soul’).^{19} Although Casanova disliked using condoms, he understood their value and refused to use ‘articles’ of inferior quality: ‘I did not accept the one she offered as I thought it looked of a common make.’^{20} Sadly, this did not prevent him from contracting gonorrhoea four times, cancroids five times, as well as syphilis and herpes.^{21}

Richard Carlile (1790–1843), an early activist for universal suffrage, wrote about common methods of contraception in Every Woman’s Book; or, What is Love? (1826). Carlile describes how many women insert ‘into her vagina a piece of sponge as large as can be pleasantly introduced, having previously attached a bobbin or bit of narrow riband to withdraw it, it will, in most cases, be found a preventative to conception…’ He also gives a detailed account of condom use:

Animal-gut condoms were expensive, awkward to use and didn’t really work, so when Charles Goodyear (1800–1860) invented vulcanised rubber in 1839 it revolutionised the condom industry, and the first rubber condoms were produced in 1855. These condoms were designed to be reused and had to be made to measure, but they did protect against pregnancy and STIs – as well as against sensation of any kind.

In America, distribution of condoms was severely hampered by the enactment of the Comstock Laws of 1873. The act prohibited ‘any drug or medicine or any article whatever for the prevention of conception’ being sent through the post. In 1876, the Comstock Act was amended to read:

The act was named for its most prominent proponent, Anthony Comstock (1844–1915), a deeply Christian man who had been shocked by the prevalence of the sex trade and contraceptives in New York. The Comstock Act did not stop people having sex, but it made having safe sex much more difficult. But America was not the only country that placed a ban on condoms. In Ireland, the 1889 Indecent Advertisements Act forbade advertising condoms, and remained in place until 1980, and Belgium banned the advertising of all contraceptives until 1973.^{24} Boots, the UK’s largest pharmacist, banned the selling of condoms in 1920 to prevent their staff experiencing any ‘awkwardness’. This policy was not reversed until 1960.^{25}

Latex condoms were invented in the 1920s. These condoms were mass-produced and affordable, and mercifully they were for single use only. After epidemic levels of STIs among Allied troops in the First World War, latex condoms were standard issue for all recruits in the Second World War. The American military also began an aggressive ‘sexual hygiene’ campaign to try and keep their troops STI-free. The introduction of penicillin in the 1940s meant that infections such as syphilis, gonorrhoea and chlamydia could be cured for the first time. However, STI rates remained extremely high during the Second World War, which suggests the troops were not wrapping up as ordered. But the condom and messages around safe sex were starting to become normalised.

With the introduction of the contraceptive pill in 1960 and antibiotics that could cure most STIs, condom use suffered.^{26} It was the discovery of AIDS in the 1980s that thrust condoms back into public view. Despite the reluctance of governments to talk about either safe sex or gay sex, the health crisis forced their hand, and condom use was at the heart of every safe-sex campaign, and has remained so to this day.^{27}

Condoms have never been cheaper, more comfortable, less stigmatised or more effective than they are today. If anyone should ever raise an objection about them to you, remind them of James Boswell stalking London with sheep guts tied onto his weeping penis, or condoms made from linen and ribbons, or the original vulcanised (reusable) condoms that were as thick as a welly boot. And if that doesn’t do it, remember the truly horrific, disfiguring diseases our ancestors would go to any lengths to avoid (other than not having sex, obviously). Thank your lucky stars and please, as Spike Milligan once said, use a condom on every conceivable occasion.

Bringing down the Flowers ^{Abortion in Eighteenth-Century Britain}

William Buchan’s Domestic Medicine (1769) was a medical blockbuster. It sold over 80,000 copies, was translated into several European languages and was republished to receptive audiences well into the nineteenth century. Buchan claimed he wrote the work with an earnest desire to ‘assist the well-meant endeavours… in relieving distress; to eradicate dangerous and hurtful prejudices; to guard the ignorant and credulous against the frauds and impositions of quacks and imposters’.^{2} Domestic Medicine covers every subject from nosebleeds and ulcers to croup and water in the head. In his chapters on pregnancy, Buchan outlines the causes and dangers of miscarriage, and morally condemns those women who sought to deliberately terminate their pregnancy:[37]

Abortion was made illegal in Britain in 1803, when the passing of Lord Ellenborough’s Act made abortion after ‘the quickening’ (first movement of the foetus) punishable by death or transportation.^{4} Abortion before the quickening was not regarded as a criminal act as most theologians and physicians agreed this stage was when ensoulment of the child occurred. Until then, the woman was not regarded as carrying a child. But abortion post-quickening was regarded as deeply immoral. Dr John Astruc called the ‘miserable women’ seeking an abortion an ‘utter shame to human nature and religion’. Barrister Martin Madan called the women who died through botched abortions ‘doubly guilty of suicide and child murder’, and a spouse procuring pills to induce an abortion is cited as suitable grounds for divorce in a number of eighteenth-century divorce trials.^{5}

As the previous chapter has shown, by the eighteenth century, rudimentary contraceptives were available, ranging from folklore and quackery to methods that would have offered limited protection. The withdrawal method is a time-honoured, if completely unreliable, option. Animal-gut condoms, which were rinsed out and reused, had been available from the sixteenth century. In his memoirs, Casanova records using a linen condom and a lemon slice as a cervical cap.^{6} Post-coital vaginal douching has been used as a method to wash away semen in the hopes of preventing pregnancy since ancient times.^{7} Owing to widespread disease, malnutrition and poor health, fertility rates would have been reduced, but unwanted pregnancies were still widespread. When a girl found herself with a ‘bellyful’ (1785), pressures of shame, circumstance, poverty and myriad other reasons could lead her to seek a termination.

In eighteenth-century Britain it may not have been illegal, but abortion (post-quickening) was certainly considered a deeply shameful act, and the practice is shrouded in obscurity. Owing to the paucity of primary evidence, researching the history of abortion is notoriously difficult. Court records tell the stories of the women who died through botched abortions, and those who faced prosecution for attempting to induce one. Physicians and midwives were unwilling to risk their own necks by providing readers with instructions on how to perform an abortion, or what herbs and tonics should be taken to induce one. Rather, euphemistic language is employed in such texts to allude to a plant’s abortive properties.

A text may list plants that will induce miscarriage, embedding them within the warning ‘not to be taken by pregnant women’, just as ‘legal highs’ advertised themselves as ‘research chemicals’ and ‘not for human consumption’ to get around the law. Advertisements for ‘women’s monthly pills’ and ‘cures’ for ‘menstrual blockage’ can be read as coded contraceptives and abortifacients. In English Sexualities (1990), Tim Hitchcock argued that:

Women seeking to ‘bring down the flowers’ (1598) would naturally progress from the least to the most dangerous methods of abortion. Certain known herbs were ingested, the most commonly known being savin, pennyroyal, rue and ergot. Savin, a species of juniper used to flavour gin (‘mother’s ruin’), is referenced in numerous court records regarding abortion once the practice was made illegal in 1803. In 1829, for example, Martha Barrett was accused of taking a ‘quantity of savin for the purpose of causing abortion’. In 1834, William Childs was charged with illegal abortion, having given Mary Jane Woolf ‘a large quantity of a certain drug, called savin… with intent thereby to cause and procure her miscarriage’.^{9} In 1855, William Longman was charged with ‘feloniously administering to Elizabeth Eldred Astins, 10 grains of a noxious thing called savin, with intent to pro cure miscarriage’. The list goes on. Abortifacients such as savin and pennyroyal are indeed toxic and consumed in a high enough quantity could induce miscarriage – at too high a dose, they could, and did, kill the mother too.

If these methods proved ineffective (as would usually be the case), the mother was left with increasingly desperate and dangerous methods of abortion. Sitting in scalding hot baths, drinking vast quantities of gin, falling down stairs or being forcefully struck in the stomach have all been recorded as efforts to induce an abortion. But if all these failed, surgical intervention could be sought.^{10} Accounts of surgical abortion are extraordinarily rare in the eighteenth century. One of the few detailed accounts of eighteenth-century surgical abortion is the record of the trial of Eleanor Beare of Derby in 1732. Eleanor was indicted on three counts: one account of encouraging a man to murder his wife and two counts of ‘destroying the foetus in the womb’, by ‘putting an iron instrument’ into the body. One of the women Beare operated on was ‘unknown to the jury’, and the other is named as Grace Belfort.^{11} Grace Belfort worked briefly for Eleanor, during which time she was raped by a visitor to the house. Grace confessed to Eleanor that she feared she was with child and for thirty shillings (paid by the rapist) Eleanor said she could ‘clear’ her of the child. The account given of what happened next is so rare, it is worth sharing in full.

Eleanor was found guilty and sentenced to three years imprisonment and to stand in the pillory for the next two market days. The mob was so incensed by Eleanor’s crimes that she barely escaped being pilloried with her life. Records describe townsfolk hurling eggs, turnips and rocks at her head until she was bleeding heavily and barely conscious. After trying to wriggle free, she was dragged back to the jail, only to repeat the ordeal the following market day.^{13}

In 1760, poet Thomas Brown wrote ‘Satire Upon a Quack’, where he attacks an abortionist who ‘murdered’ his friend’s child. The poem is a bitter and sustained attack upon the ‘graveyard pimp’ who ‘unborn infants murder’d in the womb’. Brown curses the abortionist to hear ‘the screams of infants’ and their dying mothers for all eternity, to be the ‘jest of midwives’ and ‘strumpets without noses’, and to be stalked by ‘the most solemn horrors of the night’.^{14} Brown refers to the abortionist’s tools throughout the poem. He does not mention an ‘iron skewer’ but he does allude to ‘baleful potions’, ‘stabbing verse’, ‘pointed darts’ and a ‘murdering quill’.^{15} Any thin, sharpened tool, even the sharpened point of a quill pen, would serve as a suitable ‘instrument’ to pierce the cervix and ‘bring down the flowers’. This procedure could be self-induced, or well-meaning friends or family members could attempt to penetrate the womb. How many women suffered irreparable damage, mutilation, infection and death as a result of this practice is not known, but many were willing to risk the dangers.

If this method failed, or if the poor girl simply could not afford the abortionist’s fee, there were three options left: keep and raise the child, abandon the child, or murder the child and hide the body.

In Francis Grose’s Lexicon Balatronicum: a Dictionary of Buckish Slang, University Wit, and Pickpocket Eloquence (1785), there is a truly disturbing entry: ‘To stifle a squeaker: to murder a bastard, or throw it into the necessary house [privy]’.^{16} This phrase also appears over a hundred years earlier in A New Dictionary of the Terms Ancient and Modern of the Canting Crew (1698), and in various collections of slang through the nineteenth century. That infanticide had its own slang suggests that the practice was alarmingly common. Christian Russel, of the Parish of St Paul’s Covent Garden, was found guilty of murdering her illegitimate child in 1702 by ‘throwing the same into a House of Office’. In 1703, Mary Tudor was put on trial for murdering her ‘female bastard child, on the 18th of January last, by throwing the same into a House of Office, whereby it was choked and strangled’. In 1708, Ann Gardner was found guilty of murdering her ‘female bastard… by throwing of it into a house of office, where ’twas suffocated with Filth’. Anne Wheeler was indicted for suffocating her ‘male bastard’ by ‘suffocating it in a house of easement’ in 1711. Elizabeth Arthur ‘drowned’ her ‘male bastard’ in a ‘house of office’ in 1717. Elizabeth Harrard was found guilty of drowning her ‘male bastard’ in 1739 – she was one of four women to be hanged for murdering their illegitimate children that year.^{17} The list goes on and on. In the court records for the Old Bailey alone, between 1700 and 1800, there are no less than 134 trials for infanticide, the overwhelming majority of which are the killings of illegitimate children. We must remember that this is only one court in one area, and these trials are only for those who were caught. The actual figures of illegitimate infanticide will never be known, but most of the women on trial were poor, unwed, unsupported and alone – they were desperate.

A woman who had sex or fell pregnant outside wedlock was said to be ‘ruined’ or to have ‘fallen’, both of which convey the consequences of sex before marriage. If she were wealthy enough, a pregnant woman could avoid scandal by hiding away for the duration of her pregnancy and then placing the baby in the care of relatives or someone who had been paid off. But for those who could not afford to pay for a cover-up, the consequences were bleak indeed. The social stigma was so great that an expectant mother could be turned out of her family home, lose her employment, and would be left to fend for herself in a very hostile world. Eighteenth-century bawdy literature, such as Fanny Hill, loves to tell the story of a virgin who was ‘debauched’ and abandoned, who must turn to the sex trade to survive. The sad truth is that once a girl had been ‘ruined’ and ‘fallen’ from polite society, there would have been precious few options available to her. Sex workers would have been familiar with methods of contraception and ways to induce abortion, but ‘brothel babies’ were inevitable. In 1993, a nineteenth-century New York tenement house in the Five Points district was excavated and the skeletons of two full-term infants, most likely twins, were discovered in the lower soil level of the privy. Evidence from the time suggested that this particular address, 12 Orange Street, was once a brothel. Although foetal remains have been excavated from privies before, this discovery is significant as it is the only one with strong contextual links to the sex trade.[38]

In order to escape the noose, the mother’s life depended on being able to ‘prove’ that the child was stillborn. In 1624, parliament passed an act that made it a capital offence for unmarried mothers to conceal the death of an illegitimate child, the presumption being that if the child died, the mother had killed it. In order to prove that the birth was not concealed, the mother had to produce at least one witness statement that the baby was stillborn. The prosecution would also have to prove that the pregnancy and birth had been deliberately concealed. Ann Gardner, mentioned above, was proven to have murdered her baby as she had made no provisions for the baby, and told no one she was pregnant.

This was enough to condemn Ann to death; she was executed on 15 January 1708.

The philanthropist Thomas Coram opened the London Foundling Hospital in 1739. His primary aim was to give shelter to the children of the ‘unhappy female, who fell victim to the seductions and false promises of the designing man’, and had been left to ‘irretrievable disgrace’.^{19} When it first opened, the hospital expected to receive twenty infants, but was overwhelmed with demand. Eventually, the hospital had to limit admissions to infants under two months, and admittance was done through a ballot system. So that mothers could reclaim their child from the hospital, they were initially encouraged to leave a token with their baby so they could be recognised later. Thousands of ribbons, thimbles, broken coins, lockets, bits of buttons, pieces of paper and shells left with abandoned children are still housed at the Foundling Hospital Museum today. Of the 16,282 babies brought to the hospital between 1741 and 1760, only 152 were reclaimed.^{20}

In 1967, when the UK Abortion Act was passed, midwife Jennifer Worth was asked to comment on the morality of abortions. After fourteen years of witnessing the reality of illegal abortion, she replied she ‘did not regard it as a moral issue, but as a medical issue. A minority of women will always want an abortion. Therefore, it must be done properly.’^{21} Today, most of us would like to think that we are privileged enough to never find ourselves in the situation that women like Ann Gardner found themselves in over three hundred years ago: destitute, ill, alone, stigmatised and pregnant with no maternity rights, medical care, security or means to raise a child. But, the right to safely access abortion is severely under threat. As I write this, the states of Alabama and Georgia are passing two of the most aggressive anti-abortion bills in recent American history. The bills will outlaw abortion after a foetal heartbeat is detected – what was once known as ‘the quickening’. And until 2019, Northern Ireland had some of the most restrictive laws around abortion in the world, with women facing long jail sentences if they go through with one. While we have come a long way in terms of social security, medical care and attitudes to sex in general, the debate surrounding abortion is still rooted in religious moralising that seeks to demonise and punish both the women who seek abortions and the doctors who perform them. But as the history of contraceptives shows, abortion will always be sought, risks will always be taken and no amount of criminalisation, not even the death penalty itself, will change that.

Period Drama ^{A History of Menstruation}

Few bodily functions evoke as strong and universal reaction as menstruation. Though Pliny ventured his opinion on the apparently apocalyptic properties of menstrual blood almost two thousand years ago, one merely has to look to the euphemistically titled ‘feminine hygiene products’ aisle in modern-day supermarkets to know that, though we have certainly moved on, as a culture we are still not entirely comfortable with the subject.

But a coyly worded sign is really the least of it. In 2005, the Nepalese government criminalised the ancient Hindu tradition of Chhaupadi, which banishes menstruating women from their family home and forces them to sleep in menstrual huts for the duration of their period.^{2} The practice stems from the belief that menstrual blood and by extension the menstruating woman is impure; Chhaupadi translates to ‘untouchable being’. To prevent others from being polluted, the menstruating woman cannot handle food or freely interact with others. Sadly, the 2005 ruling did not stop the practice. In 2018, following the deaths of several women who froze to death or died of smoke inhalation while trying to keep warm inside the hut, the Nepalese government made the practice of Chhaupadi punishable by three months in prison or a fine of 3,000 rupees.^{3} The practice of quarantining menstruating women is not unique to Nepal, and although the tradition is disappearing, it has been recorded around the world. In Ethiopia, for example, Jewish women still retire to a hut in the village named margam gojo, or ‘curse hut’, during menstruation.

In 1974, the American Anthropological Association researched the menstrual taboos of forty-four societies around the world, and, in descending order, found the most common taboos were as follows:

Historically, menstrual huts were used by the Tohono O’odham (Native American people), the Cheyenne (Native American people), the Ifaluk islanders, the Dahomey in present-day Benin, the Tiv people (West Africa), the Madia Gonds (Chandrapur, India), the Southern Paiute (Native American people), and the Ashanti in West Africa.^{5} And Huaulu women in Seram, Indonesia were still being banished to a hut and forbidden from eating certain types of meats until the 1980s.^{6}

The 1974 research also explores various origin myths of menstruation within these cultures and found that many of these cultures believed menstruation was caused by the moon, with the exception of the Madia Gond, who believed the vulva once had teeth that were pulled out and menstruation results from a wound that never healed, and the Arunta of Australia, who ‘attribute the flow to demons who scratch the walls of vaginas with their fingernails and make them bleed’.^{7}

By far the most common belief was that menstrual blood is unpleasant or dangerous, and this was recorded in thirty of the forty-four cultures studied. And although this research is now over forty years old and the menstrual hut is mercifully on the way out, menstruation continues to be viewed as ‘unpleasant’ by many today. I myself have often found menstruation to be an unpleasant experience. There are those who sail through a ‘visit from Auntie Flo’ (1954), enduring little more than a twinge in the abdomen. And then there are people like me, who firmly believe their uterus is re-enacting the Battle of the Somme.

For those of you who have never experienced severe PMS, allow me to paint a picture for you. It’s fucking ugly. Your body bloats, your tits hurt and you sweat uncontrollably. Your crevices start to feel like a swamp and your head is pounding all the time. You feel like you have a cold – shivering, aching, nauseous – and have the hair-trigger emotions of someone who has not slept for days. But we’re not done yet. The intense cramping across your lower abdomen feels like the worst diarrhoea you’ve ever had – in fact, you’ll also get diarrhoea, to help with the crying fits. As your internal organs contract and tear themselves to blooded bits so you can lay an egg, blasts of searing pain rip through you. Sometimes they’re so bad, you double over and can’t breathe until it’s passed, and the dull, constant ache returns. Nothing will satisfy the food monster that has been unleashed in your belly. It’s braying for sugar and carbs like a fat yak. Some foods make you feel sick. Some smells turn your stomach and make you retch. You don’t know what you want to eat, but you want to eat a lot of it. You bleed so much that all ‘intimate feminine hygiene products’ fail you – it’s like trying to control a lava flow with an oven mitt. You worry people can smell your period. You are terrified to sit on anything or stand up for a week in case you’ve bled through. And as you’re sitting, a crying, sweaty, wobbly, spotty, smelly mess, some bastard asks ‘Time of the month, love?’ And then you have to eat his head.

It’s not much fun, I grant you, but this doesn’t explain the out-and-out revulsion even the word PERIOD can elicit from some people. It doesn’t justify having to sleep in a shed.

Disgust at menstruation may be a common phenomenon, but it is not a universal one. The Vaishnava Bauls of Bengal believe that menstrual blood is a potent and powerful fluid. A girl’s first period is a cause for community celebration and her menstrual blood is mixed with cow’s milk, camphor, coconut milk and sugar, and then drunk by family and friends. Tara, a Baul woman interviewed in 2002, recalled the effect drinking her menstrual blood had on those who partook of the ceremony: ‘Powers of memory and concentration were enhanced, their skin acquired a brilliant glow, their voices grew melodious, and their entire beings were infused with happiness, serenity, and love.’^{8} Perhaps you don’t fancy using a tampon as a teabag, but the belief menstrual blood has healing properties is not without historical precedence.

The Ebers Papyrus (c. 1550 BC) includes a number of remedies to stop the breasts from sagging, including one where the menstrual blood of a girl who had just started to menstruate was smeared across the breasts and stomach.^{9} Benedictine abbess Hildegard of Bingen (d. 1179) claimed menstrual blood could cure leprosy: ‘If a person becomes leprous from lust or intemperance… He should make a bath… and mix in menstrual blood, as much as he can get, and get into the bath.’^{10} The Jiajing Emperor (1507–1567) was the twelfth emperor of the Chinese Ming dynasty. Every day he would drink a concoction called ‘red lead’, made from the menstrual blood of virgins that he believed would prolong his life. The girls were aged between eleven and fourteen and were treated so cruelly that in 1542 they attempted to assassinate the emperor. Though he was badly injured, the emperor survived, and his attackers, along with their families, were sentenced to death by slow slicing. The emperor continued to drink red lead for the rest of his life.^{11} Twat.

However, most cultures and religions stigmatise menstruation as something impure. Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism, for example, all place sanctions on menstruating women and view menstrual blood as unclean.^{12} Leviticus 20:18 reads: ‘if a man has sexual relations with a woman during her monthly period, he has exposed the source of her flow, and she has also uncovered it. Both of them are to be cut off from their people.’^{13} The Quran 2:222 says: ‘They ask you about menstruation. Say, “It is an impurity, so keep away from women during it and do not approach them until they are cleansed.”’^{14}

Galen’s theory of the four humours – blood, black bile, yellow bile and phlegm – dominated the Western medical understanding of menstruation until the eighteenth century. The Galenic ‘plethora theory’ taught that menstruation was caused by an excess or ‘plethora’ of the blood in the body.^{15} It logically followed that menstruation was the body’s way of redressing such an imbalance, as women were naturally weaker than men and in need of regular bleeding. Galen also taught that menstruation was important to conception and provided nourishment to the foetus.^{16}

Early Chinese medicine also viewed menstruation as the result of an imbalance in the body. Blood and yin energy were understood to be the ruling aspects in women and monthly bleeding threatened to cause disharmony. As early as AD 651, doctors like Sun Simiao (孫思邈) linked menstruation with poor physical and psychological health.^{17} Therefore, Chinese doctors viewed menstrual health as key to female health overall. In his Comprehensive Good Formulas for Women (1237), Chen Ziming (陳自明) wrote, ‘when providing medical treatment to women, the first necessity is to regulate the menses, therefore we begin with this’.^{18}

Foundational texts of Indian Ayurvedic medicine such as the Sushruta Samhita, composed sometime between 600 BC and the first century AD, taught that menstruation was a form of bodily purification. However, an imbalance of the three dosha energies could lead to ‘bad’ menstruation that could make women very ill indeed. Such an imbalance could result in blood that smelled ‘like a putrid corpse or fetid pus, or which is clotted, or is thin, or emits the smell of urine or fecal matter’.^{19} In order to assist the purification, the Sushruta Samhita advises that:

Doctors in the West were still debating whether or not a menstruating woman could pollute food as late as 1878, when the British Medical Journal ran a series of letters discussing whether a woman would spoil ham if she touched it while ‘the painters were in’ (1964).^{21} By the nineteenth century, doctors prided themselves on being rational men of science, but their understanding of menstruation was still shaped by narratives of pollution and madness.

Dr William Rowley, professor of medicine at Oxford University and member of the Royal College of Physicians, eagerly wrote of the hysteria that amenorrhea could bring about in women. ‘The tongue falters, trembles, and incoherent things are spoken; the voice changes; some roar, scream or shriek immoderately; others sigh deeply, weep or moan plaintively.’^{22} Heavy bleeding was also considered to be dangerous and required purging, opiates and physical restriction. Dr Charles Manfield also believed menstruation and madness were inextricably linked. ‘That peculiar states of the uterus have frequently a share in producing madness, appears from the fact that between the years 1784 and 1794 eighty patients were admitted to Bethlem hospital, whose disorders followed shortly after the menstrual state.’^{23} In 1848, Dr Althaus agreed and wrote that ‘hysterical attacks almost always occur after a sudden suppression of the menstrual flow’.^{24}

The same arguments, taken to extreme conclusions, served the cause of aggressive anti-feminists such as James McGrigor Allan, who addressed the Anthropological Society of London in 1869 to explain why women should not be granted the vote:

It was not until the early twentieth century that science began to fully understand menstruation. It is no coincidence that menstrual taboos began to be dispelled as more and more women entered the medical profession. The pioneering work of Dr Mary Putnam Jacobi (whose 1876 essay ‘The Question of Rest for Women during Menstruation’ won the Boylston Prize at Harvard University), and her intellectual heirs Clelia Duel Mosher and Leta Stetter Hollingworth, finally proved the idea of ‘menstrual incapacity’ was wrong.^{26}

Disposable sanitary towels were available by the late nineteenth century and the first tampons were invented in 1929 by Dr Earle Haas. Until this point, women would use wads of cloth called ‘clouts’, or simply bleed into their clothes.^{27} The practicalities of dealing with a period improved dramatically, but ancient attitudes that viewed menstruation as debilitating and dirty proved stubbornly persistent.

In 1946, Walt Disney released the educational film The Story of Menstruation, which was shown to high school students across the United States. The film includes the first documented use of the word ‘vagina’ on screen and was an attempt to educate young women about their bodies. The narrator, Gloria Blondell, tries to debunk a number of menstrual myths, such as not bathing or exercising while menstruating, and explains the role of neurobiology, hormones and reproductive organs in menstruation. The film also advises young women to ‘stop feeling sorry for yourself’, to ‘keep smiling’ and ‘keep looking smart’.^{28}

Unfortunately, millions of women still suffer with more than cramps each month. ‘Period poverty’ means that women the world over cannot afford tampons or towels and are still using bundles of cloth. Research has shown that women living in urban slums, refugee camps and rural communities in particular struggle to access basic menstrual sanitary wear.^{29} Every month, millions of schoolgirls miss school because of their periods. Ninety-five per cent of schoolgirls in Malawi cannot afford pads or tampons, and report using rags and string to catch the blood. As this often falls out of their underwear, more than half of these girls stayed at home during their period.^{30} And research carried out by Plan International UK in 2017 showed that one in ten British fourteen-to twenty-one-year-olds have struggled to afford sanitary products, which has resulted in thousands of girls missing school every month.^{31}

Historical narratives around menstruation have rarely been neutral. Menstrual blood has been thought to contain magical and destructive properties; it has been seen as revolting, purifying and sacred. Menstruation has been linked to madness, irrationality and ill health for thousands of years and in thousands of cultures. While medical texts argued that menstruation weakens the body, references to madness, violence, irrationality and superstitious associations with the moon suggest a power in menstruation. In patriarchal societies, menstruation was evidence that women were not equal to men, that biology had determined a different role for them. But more than this, it was used to reinforce prejudices that women were not rational creatures and required constant supervision. We may think we have moved past all this now, that we have a purely scientific understanding of menstruation and have done away with such superstitions. But until we can talk about the ‘red-headed aunt from Redbank’ (1948) openly and without embarrassment or discomfort, we can’t claim to be there yet. Period.