Practical protection.

Throughout history women have found ways of dealing with menstruation, but in developing countries access to modern sanitary wear is not always available.

Men in menstrual product advertising--1920-1949.

Menstruation and menstrual products are commonly thought to be solely the concerns of women, yet the values that shape attitudes and representations of the period are strongly influenced by men. Magazine advertising for menstrual products reveals both subtle and overt examples of male presence in the formation of perspectives on the period. This article examines a variety of menstrual product ads from two decades in order to assess how the presence of men shapes these perspectives.

"The glands of destiny:" hygiene, hormones and English women doctors in the first half of the 20th century.

Members of the English Medical Women's Federation, founded in 1917, were at the forefront of research into menstruation and menopause in the interwar years. As new hormonal understandings of the menstrual cycle emerged, women doctors and international sanitary product companies sought to educate women about their changing bodies and to reconfigure menstruation and menopause as minor events in women's lives which in no way inhibited their activities. Changing educational and employment patterns of women meant that both events, once managed in the context of the home, were increasingly managed in a public context. As knowledge of hormones increased, menopause was described as a deficiency disease which could be treated by hormone therapy. Just as one set of gendered assumptions about health, to do with menstrual disability, faded from view, medical women were exposed to another, the idea that estrogens were constitutive of femininity.

Historical review of menstrual toxic shock syndrome.

This article reviews the history of Toxic Shock Syndrome and its relationship to tampons as well as governmental regulation of the tampon product. The historical antecedents and factors leading to governmental regulation will be addressed.

Tampon use in women with endometriosis.

This study examines the potential role of vaginal tampons in women with endometriosis. In light of the fact that some medical practitioners view an appliance worn internally as a form of medical device, and in light of the recent knowledge about tampons gained during the crisis surrounding Toxic Shock Syndrome, little published information about women's menstrual patterns and practices was found. The data used here were provided by 470 members of the Endometriosis Association. These respondents' medical, surgical, and fertility case histories are stored in the Association's Data Registry housed at the Medical College of Wisconsin. Cases in this study are white; the average age is 31 +/- 5.2 years and 82 percent report use of tampons routinely. In contrast, general rates of tampon use, derived historically from several published studies using control groups matched to cases of Toxic Shock Syndrome were used for comparison. Results showed that rates of tampon use for women with endometriosis were similar to rates reported for the general population, 75 to 83 percent. We did find that within this group of mature white women, initiation of tampon use varied by age. Supporting Irwin and Millstein's study of tampon use in adolescent girls, an analysis of variance showed these women initiated tampon use at progressively earlier ages (p less than 0.001).