The history of menstruation is cloaked in myths and misunderstanding. Pliny the Elder, the Ancient Roman philosopher who gave us “Home is where the heart is”, also wrote that menstrual blood could turn dogs mad, wither crops and trees, and, if exposed to lightning, ward off “hailstorms and whirlwinds”. Pliny also believed that consuming a woman’s menstrual blood would guarantee her fidelity for life, a trick employed in love charms as recently as 2009, when a maid in Hong Kong was charged for adding her menstrual blood to her employer’s soup in an attempt to mend their relationship. This is all to say that the history of menstruation is riddled with misinformation, even now. If you add in the fact that most ancient scribes were men who primarily wrote about other men, you can understand why any historical information about periods, even misinformation, is pretty scarce. Menstruation has been so taboo historically that even the word “taboo” comes from the Polynesian term "tapu," meaning “sacred” and “menstrual flow” (that’s right, menstruation is the original “taboo”). We’ve compiled a timeline of the history of menstruation, and here’s how the original taboo has slowly become a (somewhat) accepted part of modern life.

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