Amenorrhea

Today, amenorrhea is usually a problem limited to the reproductive system that might not even warrant medical intervention. But it had far greater significance in Hippocratic and Galenic medicine. Because women’s bodies produced insufficient heat, they needed an additional method of purgation to expel waste matter (i.e., menstruation), absent which the waste “would continue to accumulate and sooner or later lead to a humoral imbalance,” i.e., disease. “This purgation was menstruation.” In Hippocratic and Galenic thought, absence of menstruation meant that “one of the major purgative systems of the female body was inoperative,” and “ any irregularity of menstruation was a serious threat to overall health” (loc 694ff.)