Today’s Menstruous Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
Early modern people were not casual about menstrual blood. Calling menstruation a “sickness,” a “monthly disease or infirmity,” or using the poetic term “the flowers,” they referred to the flow as excrement, a “Monthly flux of Excrementitious and Unprofitable Blood,” an impurity with a loathsome smell. They understood the flow to be proof of the inferiority of women’s bodies compared to men’s: men used all their blood, whereas women had a superfluity. If her period was blocked, this impure excess would trouble her brain, causing melancholy and even suicide. The foulest object that a seventeenth-century person could name was “a menstruous rag.” Beyond this disgust over a natural function of the female body, however, lay a fear of its power. Menstrual blood was believed to have magical effects, bewitching a lover, serving as an aphrodisiac, assisting in conception; an extreme fear was that intercourse during menstruation would kill the man. Here we see a clear example of the no-win position of women in that society: they were inferior and yet dangerous, disgusting and yet powerful, and it was their bodies that chiefly made them so.
Culled from: Witchcraze: A New History of the European Witch Hunts
I think there needs to be an all-girl punk band named Menstruous Rag!