Menstruation as medicine

Chris Knight

Social Science & Medicine, 1985, vol. 21, issue 6, 671-683

Abstract: Traditional healing rituals in many parts of the world seem to derive from a model of cyclical renewal provided in the first instance by menstruation. Health is seen as dependent upon a correct balance between polar opposite states such as 'heat' and 'cold', 'dryness' and 'wetness' etc. Nature seems to achieve such balance by alternating regularly between opposites such as night and day, wet season and dry. In this way, periodic 'death' (night, winter etc.) alternates with 'life'. The logic of healing rites is that humans, too, should be able to move through 'death' to 'new life' by keeping closely in tune with wider rhythms of renewal. It is argued here that ideally, women should achieve this by menstruating in synchrony with the moon, which periodically 'dies' and is 'reborn'. Failing this--runs the traditional logic--men themselves must learn to 'menstruate' in some symbolic sense in order to safeguard the rhythms of renewal.

Date: 1985
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