,--showed by their energetic denials that they understood this
superstition.[371]
In 1878 a member of the British Medical Association wrote to the _British
Medical Journal_, asking whether it was true that if a woman cured hams
while menstruating the hams would be spoiled. He had known this to happen
twice. Another medical man wrote that if so, what would happen to the
patients of menstruating lady doctors? A third wrote (in the _Journal_ for
April 27, 1878): "I thought the fact was so generally known to every
housewife and cook that meat would spoil if salted at the menstrual
period, that I am surprised to see so many letters on the subject in the
_Journal_. If I am not mistaken, the question was mooted many years ago in
the periodicals. It is undoubtedly the fact that meat will be tainted if
cured by women at the catamenial period. Whatever the rationale may be, I
can speak positively as to the fact."
It is probably the influence of these primitive ideas which has caused
surgeons and gynaecologists to dread operations during the catamenial
period. Such, at all events, is the opinion of a distinguished authority,
Dr. William Goodell, who wrote in 1891[372]: "I have learned to unlearn
the teaching that women must not be subjected to a surgical operation
during the monthly flux. Our forefathers, from time immemorial, have
thought and taught that the presence of a menstruating woman would pollute
solemn religious rites, would sour milk, spoil the fermentation in
wine-vats, and much other mischief in a general way.
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