According to The Ignorance of Certainty (page 80-82 IIRC), menstruating women have a negative influence on cut flowers (which they cause to wilt) and on yeast (they kill yeast cells). And it’s not just their touch - even the presence of a menstruating woman can have this influence. The authors claim this has been documented in many scientific tests.
I believe this is a reputable book. However, it could be wrong anyway, and plus, it was published about 1970.
What’s the Straight Dope on this?
Dunno, but I recall an article in Lancet published in 1974 speculating why flowers wilt when held by menstruating women. Sadly, I lost my copy of it, so I can’t check the source, and can’t seem to find it online.
I’m pretty firmly of the opinion that it’s all bullocks, the last vestiges of menstruation taboos that blamed menstruating women for blighted crops, soured milk and a host of other ills. Flowers wilt, that’s just what they do. Yeast is a tricky bugger sometimes, and your bread won’t rise if it’s overheated or undersugared or the yeast is dead (and dead yeast looks like live yeast, until it doesn’t proof.) Crops are subject to the whims of the weather, milk sometimes sours if a stray airborne bacterium lands on it. These are things which people didn’t always understand, and menstruation being a sign of the evils of womanhood, it was easy to pin the blame on Aunt Flo.
What does the book say? Do they cite these studies at all? I understand, simply from the title, that it’s probably an interesting book which is challenging the way you think. But as a wise doper once told me: While it’s important to keep an open mind, it’s also important not to keep it so open that your brain falls out.
The idea that menstruating women give off a miasma of posion is a bunch of very strange bullshit, apparently rather prevalent in the 1920s-1950s and considered legitimate science. The experiments were pretty odd on their face and were later debunked. This link mentions them briefly.
This page from the website “Museum of Menstruation” has a quite interesting history of the so-called “menotoxin” and refers to the flower and bread dough experiments
This is clearly woo.
Ethel Sloane says in her textbook, Biology of Women:
Why did I read the header and immediately hear Gershwin’s Fascinating Rhythm?
*Menstruating women, you got me on the go
Menstruating women, I’m all a quiver
What a mess you’re makin’…*
eeew.
Never mind. :rolleyes:
Because you are warped and twisted.
Your club membership card will arrive shortly.
Well, I kinda feel like a wilted flower when I’m menstruating.
Vance Randolph, in his 1948 book “Ozark Superstitions” states in one of the chapters that menstruating women, in a real Ozark household, are never allowed to put up pickles, as they always will turn out soft and flaccid. (the pickles, not the women.)
I could go downstairs, get the book, look up the page number, and present it for a cite, but you’re just going to have to take my word for it.
My step-dad wouldn’t allow my mom to can tomatoes when she was having her period.
I’ve heard the same thing from the ‘old-timers’, too. I figured it was all just old wives tales.
The book gives the names of several researchers who the authors (Ashley Montagu & Edward Darling) claim demonstrated it. The key reference is a footnote to another work by Montagu called Anthropology and Human Nature, which is said to contain over 60 references.
That’s true (it’s an old line). But the thing here is that the vibes I’m getting is that people are dismissing the possibility out of hand, primarily because it’s very un-PC, on account of its being linked to general primitive attitutes about women in general and menstruating women in particular. Situations like this are exactly when keeping an open mind is called for.
I don’t think the fact that there’s no known explanation counts for a whole lot. The general concept of things having unseen influences on other things is not unknown in nature. For example, fruit ripens faster when in the presence of apples. It doesn’t seem out of the realm of possibility for some aspect of people to be stronger or weaker in menstruating women such that it might influence certain other beings.
Of course, it could all be false too, as apparently some claim it is. The question is whether this is something that has been looked at carefully and debunked, or just waved away as a primitive superstition without careful study.
Yes, see my previous links.
The studies really made little sense. For instance, in one, mice were injected with menstrual blood, which caused them, to die. OMG menotoxin! Amazingly, this experiment was performed at Harvard by George and Olive Smith. They regarded this as irrefutable proof that menstruation was toxic.
Turns out the menstrual fluid had been exposed to air and contained bacteria, no fucking way! When the experiment was repeated, and the blood was first treated with antibiotics, the mice did not die.
It’s true. Every time I give my wife flowers, two weeks later they are starting to wilt. Sometimes they have already wilted at that point. Notice that this is about half a menstration cycle, so its a fact that she is either getting over menstration, approaching it, or right on top of it at some point while they are wilting. This is irrefutable evidence that the two things are connected.
That might suggest that perhaps the studies were not as silly as you suggest.
According to these authors, the studies (at least the ones they cite) were done with stuff from menstruating and non-menstruating women.
The Master speaks on a related topic:
Until you read the edited version of the quoted post, that is.
Not to say you shouldn’t keep looking for a modern scientific study, but there’s some very simple research you can do to debunk this personally.
For example, go to some florists. I’m reasonably sure (but have no real data) that in the early to mid 20th century, florists were predominantly men.
These days, it’s not very difficult to find women florists. It’s a little unscientific (as in you probably won’t personally get a really huge volume of data), but you can design a simple check of their shops to ensure that there’s no particular time of the month when the flowers wilt faster than others.
This is one case where, if the superstition were true, there would be an economic (and not merely social) dis-incentive for women to enter certain career fields. Yet, it doesn’t seem to hold up under any level of scrutiny.
True, which is why I said “pretty firmly” instead of “absolutely” of the opinion that it’s all bullocks.
For me, the key point is that there are so many very different things which are supposedly affected by menstruating women’s presence or touch. Bread, pickles, canning, bread rising, flowers wilting, crops, milk - what do all these things have in common? Chemically, nothing at all. Their common thread is that sometimes they work out and sometimes they don’t, even if you’re the best farmer/cook/baker in the world. (Well, except for flowers wilting…) People want a *reason *for why their bread didn’t rise, even though they (think they) did everything exactly the same this time as last time.
In many African religions, things like this are explained away by curses. The Hebrews blame people for pissing off God, who sends disaster when He’s angry. And the Christian religion historically blames women, because of Eve’s Sin, and menstruation is a visible reminder of that.
Now, is it fathomable that menstruating women give off some chemical miasma that might affect some of these things (the so-called “menotoxic theory”)? Yes, I suppose it is. But I think first we need to establish that there’s a real correlation here, and not old wives’ tales. And, in the resources I can find, no such correlation can be found. Bela Schick proposed mentoxins as a theory in 1920, and Montagu jumped on the bandwagon, but neither one did any actual research on the topic; they took a “what-if” as read, and wrote about it as if it was a studied and validated theory, instead of a wild assed guess.
And in some cultures, menstruating women do none of these things! In some cultures, menstrual blood is/was medicine, or menstruating women considered particularly lucky, instead of walking bleeding harbingers of doom. So how do we work those beliefs into the theory?
Some old wives’ tales do bear out under reasearch’s scrutiny - more heartburn during pregnancy is indeed correlated with more hair on the fetus’ head. Whoddathunk it? But **most **old wives’ tales are indeed bunk. The burden of proof (of correlation at least, if not causation) is on the extraordinary claim. So far, no one’s shown that correlation.
Some interesting (debunking) reading about this can be found here: Blood magic: the anthropology of menstruation by Thomas Buckley
Your test doesn’t seem at all simple to me.
From my experience, it’s extremely common for these types of myths to contain a mixture of facts and nonsense.
Who knows? (FWIW, here’s a letter (page 8)to the journal of the American Society of Bacteriologists from a few writers who claim to have verified this themselves and suggesting that “menstrual toxin” is similar to oxycholesterol, whatever that is.)
According to your source
Does anyone get “Lancet”?
The Lancet, Volume 309, Issue 8014, Page 753, 2 April 1977
“The Search for Menotoxin.”
That appears to be the Bryant, Heathcote and Pickles reference cited in WhyNot’s source. (Apparently a letter to the editor.)
[I think I’m on the side of Pickles in this, whatever he or she held. :)]