Belt topics
See how women wore a belt
(and in a Swedish ad). See a
modern belt for a washable
pad and a page from the 1946-47
Sears catalog showing a great variety - ad for Hickory belts, 1920s? - Modess belts in Personal Digest
(1966)
See a Modess True or False?
ad in The American Girl magazine, January 1947, and
actress Carol Lynley in "How
Shall I Tell My Daughter" booklet ad (1955) - Modess . . . . because ads (many
dates).
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The Museum of Menstruation and Women's Health
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Welcome to the former interior of MUM - it's
closed until I can find a
public place for it - and tour
part of it!
Read the cover
story of the Baltimore
City Paper (and its 2007
update) about this museum in my (Harry
Finley's) house. Many other publications, radio and TV
discussed this museum.
Located in the basement of my house from
August 1994 to August 1998, it had been the
only museum in the world devoted exclusively
to the culture of menstruation. People around
the world saw it on television,
read about it in publications and heard about it
on the radio.
I closed it because I opened it almost every weekend for
four years in
addition to working a regular job. I was
exhausted and desperate for free time. Nine
months afterwards I had coronary
angioplasty, although I don't know if that
was a consequence of the museum.
Read my plans for the future museum.
Above is part
of the wall showing some advertising history
from Europe and America, and a time line of
the development of menstrual protection.
The truncated lady at the left (truncation
saves money; MUM was built with the meager
funds of one average person) wears pad-holding
underpants from the 1970s, part of a large
gift from a Minnesotan; it's one of eight
mannequins at MUM.
The museum has expanded its collection to
include non-European
cultures.
Enjoy!
About 1550 BCE an
Egyptian described how lint (fetet) inserted
into the vagina could prevent conception (left).
Is this the first description of a tampon?
MUM has copies of old Greek and Hebrew
inscriptions also describing the use of
tampons for contraception, which possibly
means that women also used material as tampons
to control menstruation.
The o.b. tampon
company (o.b. means
"ohne Binde," without a pad, in
German - read proof of this; it was a
German company before Johnson & Johnson
bought it) in its print
advertising has made much of ancient
Egyptian women using tampons (so have others),
but they couldn't tell me where they got the
information.
Consumer Reports
didn't reply to my letter when I
asked the the same question, after they had
repeated the same assertion in its last
article comparing pads and tampons.
But a friendly reader of this site reminded
me that Hippocrates wrote of tampon usage in
the ancient world, although about 1000 years
after the above Egyptian writing. As soon as I
get chapter and verse I will put what I find
here.
© 1998 Harry Finley. It
is illegal to reproduce or distribute any of
the work on this Web site in any manner or
medium without written permission of the
author. Please report suspected violations to
hfinley@mum.org
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