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Top-level
So, in 1920 a doctor Béla Schick reported in a medical article that he'd spotted flowers wilt and bread doesn't leaven when it's held by women on the first or third day of their period. this, he proposed, was caused by a toxin they emit - menotoxin. 1920! BUT WAIT, it's not like he was the only one. This theory was WILDLY popular. 6 comments
There were loads of studies of this kind - rats were impaired in running through mazes or died after exposure to menotoxin! A lot of different flowers died when exposed to menstrual blood! It was posited that menotoxin caused allergies, asthma, and gastrointestinal problems in OTHER PEOPLE! This wasn't just some fringe stuff, it was fairly mainstream science that if you're menstruating you're just giving off a waft of invisible poison. Also worth noting that Mr Menotoxin Discoverer himself, Béla Schick was a pretty good doctor in other respects and virtually eliminated diptheria in the USA. Menotoxin theory stuck around for an awfully long time, and was really only put to bed in the late 70s, early 80s. Why was menotoxin theory - invisible poison emitted during menstruation - so popular? Welp, the short answer is PERIOD STIGMA. Since antiquity and earlier, there have been folk superstitions that menstruating women made wine go bad, or that they shouldn't touch this or that. Menotoxin theory put a scientific veneer on these beliefs. The body of evidence backing up menotoxin was... well, bad to say the least. anecdotal data, poor methodology, poor statistical analysis, all-round bad science, but bad science which backed up some biases and beliefs. The good news is, there is NO evidence that you're going about spraying out invisible lethal poisons when you're on your period, so water your plants, knead that bread and... yeah, maybe still don't inject your menstrual blood into rats. |
Gregory's Server
Menotoxin was widely researched. for example, here's some evidence from a 1923 paper by Macht and Lubin of what happens to a plant in menstrual blood vs other blood.