what did women do before there were sanitary towels and tampons?

Question

and how did they understand menstruation? did they get told about the birds + the bees?

Answer 1

In the old days, women used torn strips of cloth or rags -- thus the term, "on the rag."

Answer 2

Menstruation has been understood since the beginning of time although maybe incorrectly! Some though a woman should not touch food while bleeding as it may go off! They got told about birds and bees later than nowadays, usually not until the wedding night.
Women used rags instead of towels, washed and reused, a bit like terry nappies.

Answer 3

Depends on how far you go back, both menstrual cups and commercial tampons date to around 1930's, before then tampons would have still been used in the form of homemade tampons or sponges, but most commonly pads in the form of cloth pads held in place by belts – note all these options are still used today, in fact a lot of women prefer these over commercial tampons and pads because commercial sanitary products carry a lot of health and environmental risks, as well as being an expensive luxury.

Before then you are probably looking at women using whatever is available to them, leaves and moss either outside the body or stuffed inside the body as with tampons today, going even further back we have the likes of 'menstrual huts' where women gathered simply to bleed and share wisdom.

There is a whole lot of history involved with commercial and modern menstrual options, a hell of a lot of different history and cultural ideas to take into account with methods prior to the over twenty options we have today. Museum of Menstruation has a hell of a lot of information, if you are willing to sieve through their horribly badly designed and organised web site, here; http://www.mum.org

Answer 4

The other thing to think about is that in the past on average, women didn't have as many periods as women do now. This is because girls reached puberty later, menopause happened earlier, many women were pregnant a lot of the time, and if you are don't have enough to eat (which was more common in the past than now) you won't menstruate.

Answer 5

Well, my mom wasn't born and raised in America so she used cloths which she would wash, hang to dry, and eventually throw out...same thing with diapers. Don't know about the birds and the bees - never asked since I learned it in school.

Answer 6

Not exactly sure...
I'm sure doctors had a basic idea of the female body and its natural courses of action, so that probably helped the ladies to calm down after the doctors told them they weren't bleeding to death or anything, lol
As for the personal products, they probably used pieces of regular towels or napkins or animal skin(ouch...) or whatever was handy, I guess...

Answer 7

Grandma used to tell me that they used towels and had to boil and wash them in a big tub. Don't think they discussed the birds and bees much......

Answer 8

sewed together rags and rewashed them after their period, or else crouched over a hole in th ground for the time of their period.

i suppose they understood menstruation and sexual reproduction by oral tradition, ie, it was knowledge passed on through generations.

otherwise, it was guess work, and that must have been pretty scary when they bled for the first time.

Answer 9

I learnt in school that American/Canadian Indians used to have a special tee-pee for girls and they would have to go in there until is was done, meals would be brought to them. Somewhere in the bible it talks about it to, I think in Ecclesiastes. Old testament anyway, and it paints a pretty gory picture of the whole process and what should be done about it. Did you know it is a sin for man to touch a woman while she is having her cycle?

Answer 10

before they realised what periods were they used to think it was an imbalance in the womans body of having to much blood, so they used to use leaches/ and suction cups to drain blood out the of the women... of course we are only talking about women in familys that could afford this treatment back then....