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The history of female reproductive health is an intimate one. Courtship, sex and childbirth can be uncovered in the historical record through midwifery guides, childbearing manuals, \u00a0broadside ballots and the letters and diaries of the elite. The history of menstruation, on the other hand, largely remains a blind spot. \u201cEven though it\u2019s woven into the fabric of our everyday lives,\u201d says Professor Mary Fissell, \u201cmenstruation wasn\u2019t considered sufficiently important to be recorded in history.\u201d<\/p>\n
With very little source material available on this often intensely personal history, individual experiences of menstruation in the past have largely been lost or left a mystery. What we do know is that periods were less regular in pre-modern times than today, due to the fact that many women would have been malnourished. Menstrual regularity was also impacted by the fact that most women spent a larger part of their reproductive life either pregnant or breastfeeding, compared to today.<\/p>\n
The records that do survive are largely prescriptive medical texts that reveal ideas about fertility and menstruation from the time. \u201cIn the 16th and 17th centuries, people\u2019s understanding of the way in which the female body worked was very different to ours today,\u201d comments Fissell. While today we understand that women are most fertile towards the middle of their menstrual cycle, early modern physicians believed women were the most fertile right after the end of menstruation.<\/p>\n
During the pre-modern era, medical professionals also widely subscribed to humoral theory, which dated back to ancient Greece. This stated that the human body contained a mix of four humours: black bile, yellow bile, blood and phlegm \u2013 each with their own qualities. Every person had their own particular makeup of humours, the balance of which dictated their health.<\/p>\n