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WENDY ELLIOTT: Women’s health matters

One tried-and-true remedy was Lydia E. Pinkham’s vegetable compound. It began to be sold in 1875 and can still be purchased.

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An old advertisement in the Hants Journal suggested a woman best understands a woman’s ills.

Today, we might say that’s because the bulk of the male medical establishment won’t try.

Medical care is so top of mind for many women that while attending a community dinner recently, a woman seated nearby, whispered the word endometriosis as I walked by.

Laura Commins, a graduate student at Brandeis University in Massachusetts, researched Mrs. Pinkham’s history. She said her compound “brought increasing public awareness to the problems in 19-century women’s healthcare by using frank language to discuss the natural functions of women’s bodies. In an age where women’s complaints were routinely blamed on hysteria or wrong thinking, Pinkham offered another option.”

Commins said, “Though still clothed in the dramatic and misguided terms of the day, such as ‘fallen womb’ and ‘deranged organs,’ the Pinkham advertising, put women’s bodies front and center in the public eye and gave women a grandmotherly figure to look to for guidance.”

Pinkham created her herbal/alcohol compound on her kitchen stove and shared it with friends and neighbours until the family fell on........

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