HOMEPAGE
CONTRIBUTE to Humor, Words and expressions about menstruation and Would you stop menstruating if you could?
Some MUM site links:
HOMEPAGE |
MUM address & What does MUM mean? |
Email the museum |
Privacy on this site |
Who runs this museum?? |
Amazing women! |
Art of menstruation |
Artists (non-menstrual) |
Asbestos |
Belts |
Bidets |
Bly, Nellie |
MUM board |
Books: menstruation and menopause (and reviews) |
Cats |
Company booklets for girls (mostly) directory |
Contraception and religion |
Costumes |
Menstrual cups |
Cup usage |
Dispensers |
Douches, pain, sprays |
Essay directory |
Extraction |
Facts-of-life booklets for girls |
Famous women in menstrual hygiene ads |
FAQ |
Founder/director biography |
Gynecological topics by Dr. Soucasaux |
Humor |
Huts |
Links |
Masturbation |
Media coverage of MUM |
Menarche booklets for girls and parents |
Miscellaneous |
Museum future |
Norwegian menstruation exhibit |
Odor |
Olor |
Pad directory |
Patent medicine |
Poetry directory |
Products, some current |
Puberty booklets for girls and parents|
Religion |
Religión y menstruación |
Your remedies for menstrual discomfort |
Menstrual products safety |
Seguridad de productos para la menstruación |
Science |
Shame |
Slapping, menstrual |
Sponges |
Synchrony |
Tampon directory |
Early tampons |
Teen ads directory |
Tour of the former museum (video) |
Underpants & panties directory |
Videos, films directory |
Words and expressions about menstruation |
Would you stop menstruating if you could? |
What did women do about menstruation in the past? |
Washable pads |
Read 10 years (1996-2006) of articles and Letters to Your MUM on this site.
Leer la versión en español de los siguientes temas: Anticoncepción y religión, Breve reseña - Olor - Religión y menstruación - Seguridad de productos para la menstruación.

Anna Health Sponge for menstruation (and contraception?) (U.S.A., 1940s?)

This sponge, judging by typography possibly from the 1940s, is very similar to the other sponges in the museum in size (see some dimensions), suggesting that there was one source for the cans and contents.
The words "requires no belt" on the side of the can (see below) put it in the pre-self-adhesive era, thus before the early 1970s. (See some American belts and an early self-adhesive pad).

This is the only sponge the museum has that seems to explicitly promote its use for menstruation - "requires no belt," on the side of the can, below - although that would not prevent its use for contraception.

In January, 1999, I received this e-mail from the grandson of the woman for whom the sponge is named:

Dear H. Finley:

You ask if anyone remembers the Anna Health Sponge. Well, yes, I do.

My grandfather Harry Z. Cohen was a partner in the American Sponge and Chamois Company, which manufactured the article. He named it after my grandmother Anna B. Cohen.

It has long been a family joke that our grandmother's name was on thousands of women's lips.

Sincerely,

Lewis H. Rubman

See another menstrual product that took the similar name of a real person, this one famous - and also a Jew.
And toward to bottom of this page read the name of the STREET the company was located on! There's a conspiracy afoot!

NEXT: The contemporary Sea Pearls (from the U.S.A.) menstrual sponge
The contemporary Gynotex (from the Netherlands) menstrual sponge
Beautiful (Australian?) sponge can
with sponge lacking a net.
Anna Health Sponge
(U.S.A., 1940s?)
Cardboard
American sponge can with sponge.
Orange-design can
with sponge. Black can and sponge.
Main sponge page

Procter & Gamble kindly donated the sponge to the museum in 2001.

 

Above: top of can
 
Above: Bottom of can
 
The words around the side, above, read, " REQUIRES NO BELT - INVISIBLE - COMPLETE SANITARY PROTECTION." Belts, of course, held a menstrual pad between a woman's legs in the pre-adhesive-pad era, although a few women still use them.

 
In October 1997 Tambrands gave the museum this instruction sheet for the sponge. Read above about who named this sponge for whom - supposedly; ruminate on the name of the street on the can, below.
 
Above: A frequent contributor sent this scan of the interior of the cap of a case, not the one shown here. Very strange that the company is on ANN Street.
I think by calling it a
tampon the notice predates, say, 1940, since the first commercial tampons appeared in the early 1930s; it actually IS a tampon, a small absorbent object inserted into the vagina to deliver a drug or to absorb something, maybe menstrual discharge. The company perhaps wanted to join the bandwagon of the then new fabric commercial menstrual tampons.

 

 

Look at the cross in the fabric! Manufacturers stopped at nothing to make a medical connection.

NEXT: The contemporary Sea Pearls (from the U.S.A.) menstrual sponge
The contemporary Gynotex (from the Netherlands) menstrual sponge
Beautiful (Australian?) sponge can
with sponge lacking a net.
Anna Health Sponge
(U.S.A., 1940s?)
Cardboard
American sponge can with sponge.
Orange-design can
with sponge. Black can and sponge.
Main sponge page

© 2007 Harry Finley. It is illegal to reproduce or distribute work on
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