When does the recorded history of menopause begin?

March 24, 2025 6:04 PM

According to Wikipedia, the ancient Greeks "did not produce medical concepts about any symptoms associated with end of menstruation and did not use a specific word to refer to this time of a woman's life". So, presumably sometime between then and the early 1800s when French doctors coined the term.

Wikipedia also said, "In Ancient Greek, the menses were described in the plural, ta emmēnia ("the monthlies")" - which I thought was adorable.

posted by Lemkin to Science & Nature (7 answers total)

Mid-sixteenth century was when the concept started being discussed according to Heather Corinna’s book about menopause, “What Fresh Hell Is This,” and the word menopause was coined in 1816 by Charles Pierre Louis de Gardanne.

I’m pretty sure I heard of that book here on Metafilter and I’ll wholeheartedly pass along the recommendation.
posted by Kriesa at 7:09 PM on March 24 [8 favorites]

Cf. the story in Genesis 18: Abraham is told, at 99, that he'll have a son, and his wife Sarah scoffs, being "past the age of childbearing. So Sarah laughed to herself as she thought, 'After I am worn out and my lord is old, will I now have this pleasure?'"

The point being, people understood what menopause was long before there was a word for it.
posted by zompist at 8:01 PM on March 24 [11 favorites]

I haven't read it but I have heard good things about The Slow Moon Climbs: The Science, History, and Meaning of Menopause (2021) by Susan Mattern. It will have more info on the origins of our current understanding.
posted by demonic winged headgear at 8:12 PM on March 24 [5 favorites]

I have read the Mattern and came here to recommend it. It's a very interesting book.
posted by frumiousb at 12:13 AM on March 25

I haven’t specifically looked into the history of menopause or anything, but be wary of conflating “recorded history” and “European history” here.
posted by showbiz_liz at 8:57 AM on March 25 [8 favorites]

Doing some searching, I found this fascinating - yet also absoolutely horrifying - article summarizing marriage and childbearing practices around the ancient Mediterranean and Near East, with an emphasis on examples of later childbirth. It is well worth a read:

• Evidence, hints and assumptions for late pregnancy in the Ancient Mediterranean and Near East, Acta Pediatrica, 1 Apr 2023.

One interesting excerpt:

As for birth at an advanced maternal age, considering a mean of six to seven births per woman and a long breastfeeding period, which most probably would prevent conception, it may be assumed that the last delivery would have taken place at a maternal age well over 35 years. Confirmation comes from the Greek gynaecologist Soranus, who practiced in Rome at the beginning of the second century AD: in his treatise on female pathology, he states that the woman's normal period of fertility was between 15 and 40 years of age. In the laws on marriage promulgated by the emperor Augustus (reigned 27 BC – AD 14), the period in which a woman was expected to have children was fixed between 20 and 50 years of age.

It would be interesting to see what more Soranus had to say about "female pathology". I haven't had a chance to do much further research but the article lists these sources for the sentences above:

• Rawson B. Children and Childhood in Roman Italy. Oxford University Press; 2003: 95-113.
• Soranus, On the Diseases of Women 1.34. Edition and Translation of the Text in Temkin O. Soranus' Gynaecology. The Johns Hopkins University Press; 1956: 32. Online: 1 2 (unfortunately not full text unless you have some special form of access)

Just from looking at the table of contents etc of On the Diseases of Women, it looks like there are long sections on the beginning of menstruation, pregnancy, childbirth, difficult childbirth, care of a newborn, various diseases & problems unique to women, but apparently just a few passing references to menopause per se.
posted by flug at 10:35 PM on March 26

Update: It looks like you can download the full English translation of Soranus here or check it out from the Internet Archive here.

As to what he has to say about menopause:

• Pp. 21-22 he talks generally with how best to deal with first menstrual period, ongoing menstruation afterwards, and finally the cessation of menstruation:

  But in women who are about to menstruate no longer, their time for menstruation having passed, one must take care that the stoppage of the menses does not occur suddenly. For in regard to alteration, even if the body be changed for the better, all abruptness disturbs it through discomfort; for that which is unaccustomed is not tolerated, but is like some unfamiliar malaise. The methods we employ at the approach of the first menstruation must now be marshalled forth during the time when menstruation is about to cease; for that which is able to evoke the as yet absent excretion is even more able to preserve for some time menstruation which is still present. In addition, vaginal suppositories capable of softening and injections which have the effect should be employed, with all the remedies capable of rendering hardened bodies soft. But if the menstruation is too much for the strength of the patient, or again, if it is impeded by abnormal factors, then there is need for therapeutic measures which we shall elaborate in the section on “things abnormal.”

• P. 24:

  But even if [nature] created menstruation providentially, she did not contrive it for the preservation of health but for childbearing. Therefore, she did not bestow menstruation on those who are not yet able to conceive, like infants, nor on those who are no longer able to conceive, as is the case in women past their prime, but extinguished this activity upon the termination of its usefulness.

• P. 26-27:

  [Summing up an extended discussion about whether menstruation is helpful or harmful to a woman's health:] one must say that in regard to health menstruation is harmful for all, although it affects delicate persons more, whereas its harmfulness is entirely hidden in those who possess a resistant body. Now we observe that the majority of those not menstruating are rather robust, like mannish and sterile women. And the fact that they do not menstruate any more does not affect the health of women past their prime, nay on the contrary . . .

Another fascinating resource is Hippocrates' Women: Reading the Female Body in Ancient Greece by Helen King. I won't quote extensively from this but merely note that specific references to menopause are on pp. 70, 72, 76, and 93, and that much discussion throughout the book touches tangentially on the issue.

Putting all that together, I believe I would take pretty strong exception to the characterization from Wikipedia that the ancient Greeks "did not produce medical concepts about any symptoms associated with end of menstruation and did not use a specific word to refer to this time of a woman's life":

• Physicians and medical texts of this time actually give quite a lot of discussion to how the various facets and stages of a woman's reproductive life will affect her health - menstruating, prior to menstruation, post menstruating, bearing or having borne children, and on and on: All these states influence to a great degree what the physicians thought was going on in the woman's body, and therefore, how best it should be dealt with.
• Given their approach to medicine - the humours, flow and discharge of fluids throughout the body, etc etc etc - the appearance and then disappearance of a very noticeable and regular discharge of blood is bound to be viewed by them as hugely medically significant. This type of thing was seen as a MAJOR health or medical event. Whether or not menopause itself was viewed as a specific medication condition requiring medical treatment, literally every other medication condition and treatment of women would be viewed in light of their stage in life - whether pre-pubescent, currently menstruating, currently pregnant, immediately post-pregnancy, or no longer menstruating. This is so completely baked into the way they viewed health, medical conditions, and medical treatment that I think it may lead some people to overlook it - literally missing the forest for the trees. The stage of a woman's life would literally be the bedrock basis for every determination about how to treat any condition she may have, from a cold to a fever to an infection to cancer or just whatever. (Keep in mind that from our point of view, many of their medical practices are bizarre and even abhorrent. But the question here is not whether they did strange or odd or counterproductive things, but whether they took menopause into consideration in their framework for understanding the human body and for prescribing medical treatment. Clearly - VERY clearly - they did.)
• Even specifically in regards to treatment of menopause itself, the quotation from pp. 21-22 of Soranus, above, is about as detailed a prescription as he gives for many other conditions or life transitions. This rather directly contradicts the statement that the ancient Greeks "did not produce medical concepts about any symptoms associated with end of menstruation". For better or worse, they definitely had very specific ideas about how best to deal with the onset of menopause.
• Finally, whether they had a specific "word" for the condition is a bit of a red herring. Lots of things don't have a very specific "word" but still we have phrases or conventional ways of referring to things. Just because there is not a specific "word" does not mean people were not aware of the concept and could not refer to it and discuss it clearly. The ancient Greeks (etc down to today) had terms and ways of referring to menopause that were - from our point of view - pretty much as specific and well-defined as those used for other medication conditions.

For example, Hippocrates' Women has a few fascinating discussions about various ancient Greek terms for menarche and menstruation:

Hê physis, ‘nature’, here means the menstrual period. As I noted in Chapter 1, this is one of a number of different terms for menstruation used in the Hippocratic corpus, each of which reveals something of ancient Greek ideas about menstruation; the contexts for which the less common of these terms are selected may be particularly instructive. Most texts use a variation on ‘monthlies’; gynaikeia, ‘women’s things’, can mean any menstrual period, but it may be significant that this is the term chosen to be modified by prôton, ‘first’, when discussing menarche in three passages of the Epidemics. As Chapter 4 argues, the ‘first’ menstrual period is an important step on the road to womanhood. Ta hôraia is used only once, but also occurs in a context which implies menarche, suggesting that it was chosen because the first menstrual period is a sign of ‘ripeness’; in On the Diseases of Virgins (L 8.466), it is when the girl is ‘ripe for
marriage’, hôrê gamou, that absence of menstruation comes to be seen as a serious symptom. (p. 146)

In Diseases of Women 1.41 the expression used for menarche is the unambiguous ta epiphainomena prôta, ‘the first showings’ (p. 78)

So from that, we certainly could conclude that "the ancient Greeks did not have medical terms for menarche or menstruation, but instead used a variety of vague euphemisms and circumlocutions. Clearly, they considered this a topic to be avoided and referred to, if at all, only obliquely."

Of course, that is all stuff and nonsense. They used their language to discuss and refer to things, in their way, just as we do. Menstruation comes from latin menses meaning "month", menarch is from greek mēn = 'month' and arkhē = 'beginning', and so on. In short, we name things much in the same way they did, by metaphor and reference - just with a thin veneer of ancient Greek and/or Latin on top, to make it sound more scientific and official.

Similarly, Soranus referred to menopause as when "their time for menstruation has passed" or other similar phrases. He and other physicians of the time were clearly aware of this as a period of a woman's life that had ramifications for health and medical treatment, and they clearly had ways to refer to it, even if not one specific, precisely defined medical term as we do today.

The reason for that is nothing specifically to do with menopause itself, but simply their system for naming and referring to things - which is different than ours.

Now, were their ways of viewing and treating menopause and other aspects of the female reproductive system appropriate and effective? That is a whole different discussion . . .

But, clearly, they had words and they had ideas about it.
posted by flug at 12:39 AM on March 27