Getting Your Period in the Middle Ages
It involved bog moss, and it's just as uncomfy as you think
The Birth of the Virgin, about 1410, Pseudo-Jacquemart de Hesdin. Tempera colors, gold leaf, gold paint, and ink, 7 1/16 × 5 1/4 in. Getty Museum, Ms. 36 (89.ML.3), fol. 71v
Editor’s Note
Fun Fact: This article was the inspiration for the newest Getty exhibition Blood: Medieval/Modern. Come visit the Getty Center to learn more about how ichor influences art.
Body Content
There are few things in human history that have been constant. Among them are death, taxes, and of course...periods.
Yep, people have been dealing with Aunt Flo since the beginning of time.
You asked us how people with uteruses dealt with menstruation in the Middle Ages, and Getty medievalist Larisa Grollemond has responded with several period facts from the time period.
Diagram of a Uterus, about 1292, English. Bodleian Library MS. Ashmole 399. Photo © Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford. Image licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license (CC-BY-NC 4.0)
In medieval Europe, menstruation was connected to humoral theory: the belief that the body is made of four major humors or fluids, one of which was blood.
Historiated initial “U” with bloodletting, about 1265-70, Unknown. The British Library Ms. Sloane 2435, fol. 11v.
If you had too much of one of the humors, early Western medicine believed, it lead to disease. Bloodletting was a common cure for a variety of diseases, and an attempt to get the body’s humors back in balance by getting rid of “excess” blood.
So, the reasoning followed, menstruation—the monthly release of “excess” blood—was a sign of illness. And therefore, everyone who had a period was in some way diseased. Thanks, Doc.
Psalter and Rosary of the Virgin (from f. 27), about 1480-1525, English. Parchment, leather, 7in. x 5in. The British Library © British Library. Image licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
Many believed that anyone who was currently menstruating could make people near them sick. And menstrual blood itself was thought to dull mirrors and even kill crops.
Aurora consurgens, 15th century, German. Parchment, 8 x 5 in. Zentralbibliothek, Ms. Rh. 172, Image © Zentralbibliothek. Image licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
What Did People Do before Pads and Tampons?
The short answer is that most people with periods used cloth rags as a kind of DIY sanitary pad. Linen was a particularly good material for that purpose. But there’s also evidence that some people used a particularly absorbent type of bog moss.
The slightly less upsetting news is that, in the Middle Ages, people had fewer and lighter periods because of more-frequent childbearing.
There were also plenty of herbal remedies for pain, and to combat particularly heavy bleeding. Many of those recipes are recorded in manuscripts known as herbals, that record plants and their medicinal uses.
And that’s how people dealt with periods in the past!
Want to learn more about life in the Middle Ages from medievalist Larisa Grollemond? Head to our Instagram page.
The Fantasy of the Middle Ages
An Epic Journey through Imaginary Medieval Worlds$29.95/£25
