When did tampons, as we know them, come about? what did women use before then?
(I’m still not sure I wanna hear the answer but anyway…)
Don’t know about other places, but I read about it in a book on Central/Eastern Europe. 30 to 40 years ago they were still using terry-cloth (hand towel stuff) attached to a garter belt setup. Women would have a few to change and wash in between. As for before that? No clue.
-Tcat
More than you ever wanted to know about the history of menstrual products. Summary: some used nothing special, others used whatever was available. You’ve heard the charming expression “she’s on the rag”? Once that might have been meant literally…
To my surprise, commercial disposable “sanitary pads” only predate tampons by a couple of decades.
ah, guys, guys, what do you know about sanitary towels and tampons…
(sigh) 
Yes, Flodnal, sanitary towels only predeated tampons by a couple of decades, i mean, pampers were only on the market since the late 70’s (my mom told me she still had to use diapers for me…jus to give you an idea). The way Tomcat describes it is what happened before there were even sanitary towels, and before that, well, whatever was available, really. (moss, even, and all sorts of absorbant material.)
I went trekking in the jungle once for 4 months, and had to make my own cotton pads, that i then had to wash out and use again. Not nice…
check out the site flodnak posted, all the info you want is there.
And this is hardly such a ‘waa-aay back in the mists of time’ thing as all that. My own personal mother-in-law (65 years old and raised on a farm in Wisconsin) first used rags safety-pinned into her underwear. ‘Rags’ isn’t strictly accurate, I suppose. They took soft white rags from the rag-bag – worn pillowcases, sheets, dish towels, etc – and sewed them together into many-layered pads. Once used, these pads were dropped into covered buckets of bleach water until there was a load and then they were all washed together. With a laundry board in water pumped in the yard, carried into the house and heated on the stove as they didn’t have electricity, an automatic washer, or indoor plumbing. Mom never used a disposable sanitary napkin until she was 18 and worked as a live-in maid for some wealthy people.
We now see a new category advertised on TV, the non-period absorbant sheet, for when you just feel damp. And to answer the implied question there, before they had them everyone sought cotton underwear that could get a little damp and then become dry without any special liner sheet.
There’s also a device, I forget the name of it, but it looks like a minature toilet plunger, which fits in the vagina, and holds the flow. The woman removes it periodically (no pun intended), empties it, rinses it out and “reinstalls” it. Frankly, if I were a woman, I’d prefer to use a disposable “cork”, than a reusable one.
That’s called The Keeper.
Before the tampon there was… a lot less mess.
Along with the reasons given in the link above, we well-fed developed-nation womens can have a flow that puts our tribal society sisters to shame. Or maybe it’s the fluorescent lights we live under. Or cathode rays hitting our ovaries. There are many theories to explain the triple-maxi pad needs of modern women.
You hear a lot about women who exercise too much or are too thin stopping. That does happen, but it also happens that the fit and trim have such a slight periods that they don’t notice. Mom gets all worried, takes little Nancy into the gyno because little Nancy hasn’t had a period since she joined the track team… and the kindly gyno says, well, she’s having one now.
j.c.
I don’t disagree with your post out of hand. Could you give any info to back up the statements that
and
MY interest in the last quote centers around the difference between a woman who is “trim and fit” as opposed to an athlete(who might be considered to be more than just trim and fit).
Don’t forget that in times before good birth control, a married – well, sexually active, anyway – woman did not menstruate as often as women do today. Childbirth was more frequent, and by the time the bairn was weaned, there might likely be another on the way pretty soon. Besides possibly being more active, people in days gone by may well have been less well-nourished. May not have applied to wealthy upper class women, but that’s not the majority anyway.
But the question is, when she did menstuate, was the flow heavier/lighter/the same as the same woman today?
My mom tells me I should be happy I don’t have to deal with the old belts. According to her they were awful.
Whoever finally came up with the idea of putting Velcro on winged pads is a freaking GENIUS.
…a big mess on the kitchen floor?
Before tampons, there were tampons.
The ancient greeks, egyptians etc used tampons.
http://www.mum.org/germnt5.htm
http://www.cis.vt.edu/ws/GenderTech/tampons.html
You don’t want to hear about what they used as condoms :sideshow bob shudder:
For the record: I wasn’t surprised about the late arrival of disposable menstrual pads, but commercially-made tampons were available well before I would have guessed. (And disposable diapers were on the market in some countries in the '60s - but they were expensive and not very good.)
A tampon isn’t a cork. It absorbs the flow rather than stopping it. (And if you forget and leave it in too long, you learn that the little string is a very efficient wick…) The Keeper and its disposable cousin, Instead, work more like corks, but even they really catch the flow in a cup rather than stopping it entirely.
Never tried either one, but then, I don’t care for tampons, either.
Hey, flod, ya notice the quotes I put around the word “cork”? I was makin’ a funny! I know that a tampon’s different than a cork. (Goddess knows I’ve had to pick enough of them [tampons, not corks] off the floor when I’ve cleaned women’s bathrooms over the years.)
There’s a link on the site flodnak referenced that seems to indicate Lysol was once used as a feminine hygiene product!
I read somewhere that Kotex were invented during WWI-that they were used as bandages first.
Makes sense-my aunt once used one when she cut her leg shaving and there were no bandaids!
:eek:
Many militiamen (and women) today carry pads for use as bandages.
I bet militiawomen and other survivalist/outdoorsy types like those re-usable cups. I would. They’d be seriously valuble for barter in a SHTF scenario too.