Submitted by dragracesssss t3_yv78fx in history
I know that rags were commonly used but were they a one time thing or reused? (Link to the article about rags is here)
What were used if rags weren’t available?
Was free bleeding common?
Thanks in advance for the weird question. I just love late medieval/early modern history but I can barely find any extant texts or anything about it.
Worth noting that even with pregnancy/breastfeeding, women will have had lochia, a heavy bleed lasting at least six weeks after birth. I never knew about that until I was pregnant so like to share a little knowledge! I would imagine it would have been harder to free bleed with that as it is really quite heavy.
Yep free bleeding. For example in hungarian folk clothing women wore MULTIPLE underskirt and no panty. Free bleeding
Ugh, that’s so uncomfortable
No they were bleeding but they were also terrible underfed and unhealthy. They probably were lucky to even have a decent period
if you're pregnant all the time, that's 9 months of the year you aren't bleeding. Many women didn't have a break between pregnancies, and many don't menstruate during nursing, especially if underfed. So it's not outside the realm of possibility that women went years without a period but many pregnancies.
Yeah I was pregnant or breast feeding (so no periods) for more than 5 years, so that comment is real
>What were used if rags weren’t available?
That would be a very unusual situation. Linen was used, as it was easy to bleach it clean, and there was often a pad of moss or flax used for absorbency.
Just to clarify you mean bleach as in the verb right?
I think it was okay to use nothing but worth noting that throughout most of history, and for the majority of their adult/fertile lives, women were either a) pregnant, or b) too malnourished to have periods. So it wasn't really the same thing as now when most women menstruate for 30-40+ years.
More recent than “early modern” in the case of Eastern Europe. I somewhere read a criticism of the communist block command economies that used the lack manufacturing devoted to feminine hygiene products (evident by the cloths lines festooned with drying blood-stained rags) as an example of production not being directed towards goods wanted by the population. Of course, the fact that production was controlled entirely by men must have been relevant.
Or, they didn’t have enough excess industrial capacity for luxury items. I worked with a couple of women in the early eights that had fled brutal communism in East Germany that got along fine without wasteful pads that most American women use.
A majority of menstrual products favored in Western cultures may be wasteful in one degree or another, but I'd hardly call them a "luxury item".
many women up until the 20th century would simply bleed into petticoats. Yes rags were very common as well, how often these were changed depended on the intensity of the mesntrual flow. Cloth could be held up against the body using special "girdles" and in the victorian era special "sanitary aprons" (basically waterproof/resistant petticoats) could be used as well
Well, there is some academic interest in the topic. But patchy information because it was/is a taboo topic, plus a woman especific topic (so extra shameful 😖). Which means limited sources. This is a fashion history podcast, they interview a professor on this very topic
What made you think rags would be discarded after use?
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Piece of clothes and they were washed by washerwomen, who could gossip on who was getting pregnant or not
Certain types of mosses were used to cover cuts and wounds (inc in WW1), which are anti bacterial and highly absorbent. I have no evidence that it was used for mensturation, but it would certainly have made sense.
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No love, that’s a fart.
"What was used in late medieval to early modern england for mensuration products?"
Mrs_WorkingMuggle t1_iwdg0ya wrote
folded cloth held in place by a strip of cloth, a narrow fabric pouch filled with moss. also especially in winter, many many layers were worn, so for poor women especially, i'd assume free-bleeding was the way.
Also, yeah. a large proportion of women were pregnant/nursing for a lot of their lives, so years could pass without menstruating.