Menstruation and the moon in early modern England (360G-Wellcome-212363_Z_18_Z)

The association of menstrual synchrony with the moon relates back to ancient mythologies. Historians largely dismiss the relevance of a lunar theory of menstruation by the Middle Ages, but the moon’s ability to disturb a woman’s womb through her menstrual blood was continuously discussed by early modern medical and natural philosophical writers. This project asks how the sympathetic connection between menstruation and the moon was manifest in learned discourses, vernacular knowledge, and everyday practices. Answering this requires studying women’s knowledge, the relationship between natural and occult philosophy, and the link between theory and practice in medicine. This research draws together rich, diverse manuscript and printed sources to demonstrate how the influence of the moon over the female body was ubiquitous in early modern medicine and natural philosophy. In vernacular medical handbooks, the moon was a popular socio-cultural symbol of femininity and sexual difference. Its power over the female body was demonstrated through practice in recipe books, casebooks, female-authored almanacs and medical treatises on phlebotomy. The cause and consequences of its influence were debated through learned discourse, highlighting the temporal dynamics of menstruation, and the continuous significance of fluids to changing intellectual frameworks of the body.