More washable items:
Washable pads from Almora, Uttar Pradesh state, India - Nineteenth-century Norwegian washable pads - Italian washable pad, probably from the 1890s
Snap-on style washable pad -Washable pad with belt - See how women wear a belt with a pad - see a Swedish ad showing a belt and pad
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? | e-mail the museum | privacy on this site | who runs this museum?? |
Amazing women! | the art of menstruation | artists (non-menstrual) | asbestos | belts | bidets | founder bio | 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, current | puberty booklets for girls and parents | religion | Religión y menstruación | your remedies for menstrual discomfort | menstrual products safety | science | Seguridad de productos para la menstruación | 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
Leer la versión en español de los siguientes temas: Anticoncepción y religión, Breve reseña - Olor - Religión y menstruación - Seguridad de productos para la menstruación.

German instructions for making washable menstrual pads, underpants, menstrual belts, etc., probably before 1900

Almost everywhere, middle-class women made much clothing themselves in the early 20th century and before, including menstrual gear, underwear for cold weather (in an era when underpants for women was basically two cloth legs tubes joined at the waist and open at the crotch from abdomen to back) and items to protect themselves and their beds from vaginal discharge after childbirth (all of which we see below).

Below is a page entitled "Underwear for special times" from an unidentified German publication, probably from the late 19th century, giving housewives patterns for undergarments to be made from scraps of cloth found in their houses, "the softer the better." Just as in America, German women could buy books of tips for almost every domestic need, especially in the era before wide-spread disposable goods and packaging (read Susan Strasser's Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash, 1999, Metropolitan Books - buy it - for a fascinating look at this). As you can see, Germans are gründlich - thorough, both their strength and weakness.

Menstruation items are illustrations 102-106.

I took the page from Die Unpäßliche Frau: Sozialgeschichte der Menstruation und Hygiene (The Indisposed Woman: A Social History of Menstruation and Hygiene), by Sabine Hering and Gudrun Maierhof (Centaurus-Verlagsgesellschaft, Pfaffenweiler, Germany, 1991). The book is a gold mine of information about German medical and menstrual culture.

I made the page so big to be mostly readable for those who can read German, in spite of the Fraktur, the hard-to-read style of type in which the Germans periodically published their books, newspapers and magazines, the last time during the Hitler era, when it was considered more "authentic" for Germans than Roman script. I never had to master the handwriting of that time - I once did graduate study in German - but it correlated somehow with the Fraktur, and I have heard Germans, including my brother's mother-in-law, who learned it in school, chuckle at it.

More washable items:
Washable pads from Almora, Uttar Pradesh state, India - Nineteenth-century Norwegian washable pads - Italian washable pad, probably from the 1890s
Snap-on style washable pad -Washable pad with belt - See how women wear a belt with a pad - see a Swedish ad showing a belt and pad

© 1999 Harry Finley. It is illegal to reproduce or distribute work on this Web site in any manner or medium without written permission of the author. Please report suspected violations to hfinley@mum.org