Should Women Menstruate? - Herbert M. Shelton

Hygienic Review
Vol. IV May, 1943 No. 9
Should Women Menstruate?
by Herbert M. Shelton

What is called by the editor of She "a challenge to science" appears in the January issue of that magazine in the form of an article by Tora Selander Nelson, under the title: "Is Woman's Cycle Necessary?" She's editor assures us that "There is positive evidence to warrant the hope that the menses can be eventually eliminated". In a box the editor says: "The author spent many months of intensive study in exploring this subject and is well qualified to offer her fascinating hypothesis. .Information and advice was obtained from the Museum of Natural. History, the New York City Medical Center and the Academy of Medicine, but the views expressed are the author's own."

Let us first answer the question that forms the title of her article before turning to the article itself, which does not even discuss the question in its title. "Is Woman's Cycle Necessary?" To answer this question, it is first necessary that we understand what is meant by woman's cycle. This is the term applied to a whole complex series of phenomena included in the changes in the ovaries and womb during the maturation of an ovum, its expulsion from the ovary and, finally, if impregnation does not occur, its expulsion from the womb.

This cycle has two possible endings: (1) It may end in pregnancy, birth and lactation; or (2) it may end in the expulsion of the unimpregnated ovum and the casting off of the temporary "lining" of the womb. Obviously the first of these cycles may be interrupted by abortion (spontaneous or induced) or by miscarriage.

Mrs. Nelson does not discuss the necessity for this cycle of events in her article. The question is hardly discussible. It would be like discussing the necessity of the peach tree to put forth blossoms before it can produce peaches. The cycle is essential and can be avoided only by greatly impairing or completely wrecking the female reproductive system.

What, then, does Mrs. Nelson discuss? The reader will find the answer to this in the editor's statement that "there is positive evidence to warrant the hope that the menses can eventually be eliminated". She discusses the necessity for the customary loss of blood, or hemorrhage, that marks the end of a cycle that does not end in pregnancy.

Woman's complete ovulation cycle covers a period of twenty-eight days (there are cases that run longer and some that run less time than this) and, if pregnancy does not intervene, ends with the sloughing off of the temporary lining of the uterus and, commonly, with more or less loss of blood. What Mrs. Nelson wants to know, is this: is the loss of blood necessary.

She presumes to speak for her sex when she says: "all of us (women) have resented this ignominious interruption of our normal lives as a beastly injustice." "Nature", she says, "is cruel and stupid". For this nature has laid upon woman the entire "burden" of pregnancy and childbirth and has so arranged matters that "for some thirty years of our lives, all the goals we set for ourselves" are "divided".

She resents the fact that "nature" ignores woman's petty social, political, artistic and commercial schemes. These trivial artificialities loom larger in her mind than the fundamental processes of life and she resents the fact that child-bearing interferes with cock-tail hour and theatre-going. This attitude toward the phenomena of life makes it impossible to understand these phenomena or to find a true solution for the problems presented by abnormal phenomena.

For years we have been saying in our lectures and writings that menstruation (Mrs. Nelson calls it, after the medical fashion, a "periodic function", though questioning its normally) is an abnormal phenomenon, that it belongs in the category of disease and can be remedied in all, or nearly all, cases.

Mrs. Nelson discovers, in her questioning of Science, that ovulation and menstruation are two separate processes and that while ovulation is essential to reproduction, menstruation is not. She says: "There are women who never menstruate, and yet bear children. Besides, the overwhelming majority of lower mammals, with reproductive organs astonishingly like our own, do not". But when she asks "science" what is the reason for this "function" of menstruation, she learns to her astonishment that, "strangely enough, science today does not profess to know".

Briefly reviewing the ripening and release of an ovum and the uterine changes necessary to the beginning of a possible pregnancy she says: "So far, then, the animal and the human processes, are entirely alike, but here the similarity ends. In the lower animals as soon as the climax of the cycle is over, the enlarged blood vessels slowly shrink to their normal size and the accumulated blood, not being needed by any lodging embryo, is redistributed in the general blood stream. In the human, to the contrary, the overfilled capillaries break under the strain and the blood drains into the womb, to appear, eventually, as the menstrual flow."

"Why this general mess, discomfort and often severe pain?" she asks. "What is accomplished through this regular and repeated wounding?" "Why, after Nature has perfected the mammalian reproductive system for hundreds of millions of years, with everything running smoothly up a constantly refined scale of evolution, does she start to complicate matters?"

She turns to her "authorities". Metchnikoff and Francis Marshall suggest that there is "something amiss," but they do not seem to know what. "Research scientists", when asked why women hemorrhage each month, "merely say that their knowledge is incomplete". She feels that the "scientists" who are practically all men (the remainder are all masculinoids) do not consider the matter of pressing importance because "they are never, in the midst of some exciting experiment, doubled up with an agonizing ache".

The question comes to us: If these men are not interested in women's problems, why don't women solve their own problems? Did Mrs. Nelson go to the men and does she resent their apparent lack of interest because she feels that women are incapable of solving their own problems? Shame upon these imitators of men! If they can drink like men, and smoke like men, and philander like men', and become welders and riveters like men, why ask men to solve their problems for them?

Mrs. Nelson makes another startling discovery. She says: "Take, for instance, the nature of the hemorrhage. With the one exception of childbirth, all kinds of bleeding, be it nasal, pulmonary or intestinal, are considered a symptom of disease". Why is the bleeding accompanying childbirth not also considered abnormal? Why does even Mrs. Nelson assume that this bleeding is normal? Does she find it in the lower mammals at birth?

She adds: "If to any such bleeding you add a rising temperature, an irregular pulse-beat, changes in blood pressure, pain, and a general lowering of-muscular tone, you certainly would have any patient worried. As for any physician calling the whole a 'natural' process, the chances are remote. "Nor do these recognized features of menstruation stand alone. There are physical changes as well. No woman needs to be told about the extra effort needed to remain up to par in her work at such times, or about her feelings of depression or elation. Her temperament, for a few days, becomes undeniably mercurial".

To these physical and nervous symptoms let us add the frequent headaches, pains in the back and legs, pimples on the face, constipation or diarrhea and peculiar body odor. She tells us that investigations of crime records in many countries show "the percentage of feminine crime is incomparably higher during the menstrual period; and as far as suicide is concerned, the evidence of serious mental disturbance is simply terrifying". We ourselves have noted, in dealing with insane patients, that all their symptoms of insanity are much worse during menstruation.

Mrs. Nelson makes out a good case for the idea that menstruation is an evidence of disease, but she does not draw the necessary inference there from. She is simply not willing to face the facts in the case and point to its true causes. She finds instead, that menstruation is simply the outgrowth of an evolutionary short-coming. We will come to this later.

In our book, "Menstruation - Its Cause and Cure (out of print) first published over ten years ago, parts of it published much earlier, we say:

Ovulation is a normal process and is not necessarily accompanied with any sanguineous flow -bloody flux- or "show of blood". It is quite true that there is usually a loss of blood during part of the period of ovulation, but it is also equally true that with almost all women in civilized society, the period is marked by other morbid symptoms. We have no more right to consider the loss of blood to be an essential part of the process of ovulation than we have to regard the accompanying pain to be so.* * * My studies and experiences have led me inevitably to the conclusion that the loss of blood is pathological and that it is in no sense a natural (normal) or necessary part of the physiological process of ovulation.

The fact was pointed out by Dr. Trail over seventy-five years ago that in practically all cases the loss of blood "is in almost exact inverse ratio to the constitutional tone and vigor." In Menstruation Its Cause and Cure, we say:

* * * in what are termed1" civilized countries, women oscillate between great extremes. In some there is no menstrual flux, in others it is very scanty and lasts but a few hours, or for a day or two, while in others it lasts seven or eight days, accompanied with much pain and discomfort, and the flow is so profuse as to be almost hemorrhagic. These marked variations in menstruation correspond in exact ratio with the varying degrees of health of different women, or In the same woman at different times. There does not exist a greater difference between the human female and the female among the lower animals in this matter, than exists between some women and other women.

Turning to the other side of the picture she says: "Those of us who go in for sports, exploration and other physically demanding activities, know, that the length of the period usually stands in direct proportion to our physical condition. If the latter is top-notch, as it is apt (likely) to be after systematic training, the menstrual time is shortened and the loss of blood reduced to a minimum. Every so often, under such conditions, the menses disappear altogether, and this disappearance invariably corresponds with our highest peak of health."

Here, Mrs. Nelson finds the key to the solution of her problems, but she rejects it. Ten years ago, we pointed out these facts, plus the further fact, that, as physical vigor increases the pain and other symptoms accompanying menstruation also lessen and finally disappear.

After briefly discussing a lot of hokum about thyroid deficiency increasing menstruation and thyroid sufficiency decreasing the flow (she fails to see these two conditions as part of the general health or lack of it) she comes to her hypothesis of the cause of menstruation.

She starts with the hypothesis that man is descended from an ape, and that the ape is descended from a quadruped. Instead of walking on all four of our feet, we stand and walk on our hind legs. While we have been in this unnatural position a long time, evolution has failed to adjust our internal organs to the upright position; they are still adjusted to the horizontal position of quadrupeds. This allows our organs to crowd down into the -pelvis and the small "extra" pressure thus put upon the blood vessels of the pelvis results in menstruation.

This is a hopeless picture. If menstruation is a disease we may hope to remedy it. If improved health lessens or abolishes it, we may even hope to interest a few women in improved health. But if it is due to an evolutionary mal-adjustment, the trouble can never be remedied. According to the apostles of transformism (miscalled evolution) man has been man and has undergone no change in his biological equipment for at least five-hundred thousand years, probably much longer. If evolutionary adjustments are so slow Mrs. Nelson will never live long enough to see her problem solved. She approaches the true solution, but she runs away from it.

In Menstruation-Its Cause and Cure we also considered the circulatory interference caused by sagging abdominal organs, which we estimated exist in well over ninety per cent of women, over fourteen years old. We say:

When we consider that in the average woman, due to lack of their normal support, the abdominal organs gravitate toward and rest upon the pelvic organs, and thus interfere with the return circulation from the pelvis, we easily understand why the hyperemia (excess of blood) becomes great enough to result in a leakage of blood and blood serum through the lax tissues of the uterus.

We did not attribute this sagging of organs to evolutional short-comings, but to a failure of the normal supports. We pointed out that only where there is unantagonized gravitation does ptosis occur and that the healthy organism effectually opposes gravitation. We attributed pelvic laxness and loss of tone to the same causes that produce 'laxness and loss of tone throughout the body to which are added, "weight from above-weight of a clogged colon in constipation, pressure from gas distention of the intestines, sagging of the abdominal organs due to faulty posture, muscular weakness and lack of exercise, pressure of belts, corsets, tight and heavy clothing, etc."

Here are causes that may be understood and removed and here are conditions that we can remedy. Ptosis may be both prevented and remedied. One cannot hope to prevent or remedy u normal condition that has resulted from the hypothetical slow evolution of man from a quadruped, no matter how faulty it may be.

Suffice it to say that our experiences have convinced us that the periodic blood-loss sustained by woman is due solely to a loss of integrity in her tissues (the local loss of integrity is merely part of the general loss of integrity) and not to any failure of adjustment. We deplore the too frequent use of the hypothesis of transformism to account for defects that are more easily accounted for by facts close at home. Evolutional failings (lack of adjustments) are remediable only by more ages of slow evolutionary process; failings due to factors over which we have control are remediable now.

She sees a way out. Or, did some manufacturer of endocrine products see it for her? She wants some of our endocrinologists to find a glandular product - "be it thyroid or pituitary- which, if given in an individually adjusted dose, would cause woman's menstrual process to stop short just before the breaking-point of her uterine capillaries."

This is a commercial program that ignores the harm that may result from the procedure. It is a voodoo program that seeks to control the forces of nature but does not seek to remove the cause of the abnormality. Mrs. Nelson spent too much time with the museum of "Natural" history, the New York City Medical Center and the Academy of Medicine.

She wants a substitute for health. She will be satisfied with a crutch rather than a correction. She does not desire improved health and increased vigor in women, She does not want a means of normalizing female function. She is a pitiable victim of current medical and commercial thinking.

We do not share her view that some substitute for good health and the things upon which this depends should be devised to suppress menstruation. Our modern trend is to seek substitutes for normal functions rather than for normalization of function. We prefer arch supports to normal arches, eye-glasses to normalization of visual function, dental plates to good teeth, abdominal supports to normal abdominal muscles, vaccines and serums to natural resistance, artificial vitamins to natural foods, insulin to a good pancreas, cathartics to normal bowel function, "twilight sleep and Caeserean section to the pleasures of normal childbirth. Our love of ersatz physiology and anatomy (substitutes for normal function and structure) grows out of our ready acceptance of and satisfaction with a low standard of health and our lazy compliance with low conditions. This is a threefold source of mischief-first, there is the neglect of those positive natural conditions upon which normal function depends; second, there is the disregard of the impairing influences that are primarily responsible for deterioration of function and structures; and third, there are the harmful effects of the substitutes, themselves.

Herbert M. Shelton