As an avid book collector, I came across a 1956 Medical book

[Horse with no Name]

Great advances have been made, however, I shudder to think that we may digress in women's health.
These are entries from this book:

Premenstrual Tension
A condition characterized by increase in nervousness, irritability, emotional instability, depression, frequent headaches and mastalgia which occur periodically and cyclically in the week or 10 days prior to menstruation and disappear a few hours of after onset of the menstrual flow.

Here is another totally misogynist view:
Dysmenorrhea must be distinguished from the so-called (can you believe this phraseology in a medical text?) physiologic menstrual distress in which there may be headache, lassitude, nausea, vomiting, pelvic fullness and nervousness, but no pain.
Distress occuring prior to menstruation is called premenstrual tension.

Another lovely excerpt:
Occasionally a very rigid hymen is found at premarital examination (wtf is this--to decide if she is a virgin??) or on examination after marriage if the marriage hasn't been consumated. In such case, a reverse episiotomy should be done.

Therapeutic Abortion:
Therapeutic abortion is legally defined in most states as that type of instrumental termination of pregnancy which is carried out when the continuation of the pregnancy would endanger the life of the patient.
Variations in definition and in interpretation of this law exist in different areas. Consultation with at least one other physician is usually necessary before therapeutic abortion is permitted, and in some instances the case must also be presented before an appropriate hospital board or to the hospital superintendent for approval.

So it seems that women's healthcare was solely at the whim of men.
If they didn't want to have sex and claimed a headache, prementrual tension of course.
As a virgin, if she couldn't handle penetration, they cut her.
Then if having a baby threatened her life, 2 doctors and a hospital board had to be consulted.
I shudder to think that this entire chapter in this book will brought back verbatim.

[ret5hd]

1. does the book have entrys for...

the vapours?

or apoplexy?

[Horse with no Name]

3. Vapours no, apoplexy yes eom

[jobycom]

2. You really should calm down. You're getting shrill and hysterical

Don't make me have to slap you! :rofl:

[sui generis]

4. a "reverse" episiotomy?

Oh. I thought they sewed 'er up altogether.

Yes, all you women are belong to us men. We're series!!1!

Not only verbatim but, a doctor may only examine a female if she is entirely covered by a medical shroud and at the request of her male kinfolk. Ritual female circumcision helps prevent disease from being spread by unclean women in their unclean time.

oy. The scary part is it's not a real big leap of the imagination.

[AnnInLa]

5. And, those are PRECISELY the reasons why

NO woman should ever be seriously considered as President of the United States, or as a fighting soldier.

Oh, wait.

[AnnInLa]

6. My mother still believes all that hokey

Some of her favorites:

1. No female in the family can wash her hair, or go swimming while having her period.

2. It is important to appear feminine at all times....even when you are alone. That's how you know you are truly feminine, when you are alone, and still maintain all shows of femininity.

3. Couldn't ride bicycle or ride horses before I was married....might rupture the you-know-what. (I did it anyway, of course.)

4. Females shouldn't use tampons before marriage (might rupture the you-know-what.)

5. The you-know-what was of prime importance. An intact one was your "gift" to your husband on your wedding night.

6. Needless to say, I was a HUGE disappointment to my mother....we still don't speak very much.

[SoCalDem]

9. My mother-in-law's doctor suggested she smoke when she was pregnant

so she would lose her appetite.. My husband was born in 1943.. the little booklet that the doctor puts down the wieghts & notes at peds visits had an ad for Chesterfield ciggies..

My how times have changed:)

[Horse with no Name]

10. I'm old enough to remember

Doctor's suggesting a glass of wine at night when you were pregnant to relax.

[woodsprite]

7. Those were the days when they also did not advocate

breastfeeding. Instead, they wanted you to make up bottles of cows milk, drip a few drops of vitamins in it and flavor it with enough Karo syrup so the baby would drink it. I know, my mom had the "recipe" the doctor gave her. If it didn't seem to "fill the baby's tummy", she was instructed to add enough rice cereal to the mix to make it a thicker consistency so that baby would be "full enough to sleep thru the night."

My mom thought she was pregnant after she had me and was very upset after 7 pregnancies in 7 years (my bro, myself and 5 miscarriages). The doc recommended a therapeutic abortion if the test turned out positive and said he would have no problem getting approval with her history of miscarriages, eclampsia, high bp. Luckily, she didn't need any of that - she just was starting menopause early. Sooooo, they prescribed Valium.

UGH!!!

[Horse with no Name]

8. There is an entire generation of women addicted to Valium

It is terrible, especially when you start thinking about the root causes.:(