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
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.
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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