No Longer the Same Woman: Medical Perceptions of Menopause, 1900–1950

Abstract

Medical definitions of menopause reflected the difficulties physicians had describing, in a precise manner, a process which they saw as transformative. But the lack of explicitness did not worry them. They were more interested in what factors caused an early or late menopause as if such an understanding would allow them to predict when it might occur in individual women. As an exercise, however, it was rather abstract. Less so were practitioners’ mostly negative views of the experience of menopause, a reflection of their own and society’s perception of middle-aged and aging women. Nonetheless, as is reflected in the advice and reassurance they gave to women, medical negativity did lessen over time.