What did American and European women use in the past for menstruation?
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Compare Dr. Pierce's The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser; or, Medicine Explained, (cover) 1895, Buffalo, New York, from Pierce's own press at his World's Dispensary Medical Association: "Spermatorrhea' (loss of semen without copulation, which usually means masturbation)
Trade card, "The Truant Boys," for Dr. Abbey's book and medicine (1877)
More patent medicine

The Sexual System and Its Derangements, (selections), by Dr. E. C. Abbey, more than 87 pages (the covers and the last pages are missing)
(1882; Buffalo, New York, U. S. A.)

Doctors in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries sure had their hands full - as did their patients - with nymphomania, menstruation, but especially masturbation, which this physician writer says directly causes a "great majority of the ills of humanity." Dr. Abbey devotes 12 pages to it and its cure - nymphomania gets four - more than to any other subject, including tumors, cancer, venereal disease, etc.

But since almost everyone masturbated at one time or another, he had a captive and guilty audience, and better yet, he had a cure for $10 a month, which he does not reveal.

He regards male masturbation - the loss of the incredibly important semen (he writes that semen "moulds character"!) - as more destructive than female self-abuse, I think because of the greater valuation of men at that time (the balance is more even now). In the "sex" (gender) section, he writes, "The size of the testicles marks the courage and determination of the man," a statement hinting at the tone of the book.

Interestingly enough, Dr. Abbey's book came from Buffalo, New York, the city in which another great anti-masturbator, Dr. R. V. Pierce, had a patent medicine empire. I don't know if they worked together - mutual anti-masturbation? - and each sold his own patent medicine.

To be fair to the doctors, masturbation was generally despised, and not just in America. In a back room of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History I flipped through an 1890s French medical supplies catalog advertising restraint clothing for babies to prevent their playing with their genitals. Sinful tots!

But at this time, the late 19th century, some American doctors were using an English invention to masturbate their hysteria patients (and some male patients). Rachel Maines describes this amazing practice in her The Technology of Orgasm: "Hysteria," the Vibrator, and Women's Sexual Satisfaction (Johns Hopkins Press, 1999). I can't imagine how these two opposite practices could be reconciled.

Enjoy Dr. Abbey's outrageous language, claims and cures!


The booklet is a gift from SarahAnne Hazlewood.

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youth - manhood - masturbation (spermatorrhea) - menstruation - menopause - uterine problems - sterility - abortion - nymphomania - leucorrhea ("the whites") - sex (gender)

What did American and European women use in the past for menstruation?

news | first page | contact the museum | art of menstruation | artists (non-menstrual) | belts | bidets | Bly, Nellie | MUM board | books (and reviews) | cats | company booklets directory | costumes | cups | cup usage | dispensers | douches, pain, sprays | essay directory | extraction | famous people | FAQ | humor | huts | links | media | miscellaneous | museum future | Norwegian menstruation exhibit | odor | pad directory | patent medicine | poetry directory | products, current | religion | menstrual products safety | science | shame | sponges | synchrony | tampon directory | early tampons | teen ads directory | tour (video) | underpants directory | videos, films directory | washable pads | LIST OF ALL TOPICS

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