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The menstrual cup in The
Intimate Side of a Woman's Life,
by Leona W. Chalmers (1937, Pioneer Publications, Inc., Radio City, New
York)
Leona Chalmers might have created the first commercial menstrual cup
(read a provisional history of the cup) in the
U.S.A. (among other contenders is the Daintette
cup), in the 1930s, although patents for cups go back to the 1860s in the
United States (here's the first).
This book has almost the exact title and cover photo of a pamphlet from
probably the same period, but in this tour de orifice she describes
enemas for women, douching (which she promotes, especially for the common
white or clear discharge from the vagina, leucorrhea), vaginal exercises
and sexual hygiene. Today we frown upon douching (read an admonitory essay), as it disrupts the natural acidity of the
vagina and destroys or flushes out necessary bacteria.
Frank Netter, M.D., drew the illustrations; he was a well-known medical
illustrator.
At the bottom of this page I put the second
of two testimonials on the back of the dust jacket, which attributes many
divorces to "unclean" wives. (Unclean wives, read this ad!)
Read the rest of
the chapter, Vaginal Hygiene (douching), from
which this section was taken.
The director of the cytology section of a state
public health department kindly donated the book.
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The cover and title are almost identical to that of her probably
contemporary booklet.
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The instructions for inserting
the cup, similar to those today.
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Above: One of two testimonials
on the back of the dust jacket. Throughout the book Chalmers writes
only respectfully of doctors and their profession; she is a doctor's wife
herself.
"[B]reeder of disease" takes you
by surprise, doesn't it?
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© 2000 Harry Finley. It is illegal to reproduce
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