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An extract from
Feminine Forever by Robert A. Wilson M.D.,F.I.C.S, F.A.C.S. F.A.C.O.G 
1966, Evans (with Lipincott);  N.Y. 

which marked the beginning of estrogen's wholesale commercialization and ill-deserved reputation of a being a panacea for all menopausal ills. It is remarkable for its overwhelmingly negative view of menopause and Dr Wilson's apparent conviction that "femininity" depends on being physically attractive to the male and keeping a good home. If you are apalled by his sentiments, bear in mind that Dr Wilson had been practising for forty years at this point. He must have been born at the end of the 1800s when Victoria was still on the throne and his expectations of women would have been formed in this era. 

To more HISTORY
Menopause - The Loss of Womanhood and the Loss of Good Health
AT THE RISK of seeming paradoxical, I should like to launch into the subject of menopause by discussing its effect on men. Menopause covers such a wide range of physical and emotional symptoms that the implications are by no means confined to the woman. Her husband, her family, and her entire relationship to the outside world are affected almost as strongly as her own body. Only in this broader context can the problem of menopause—as well as the benefits of a hormonal cure—be properly appreciated.
“Doc, they tell me you can fix women when they get old and crabby.” A melodramatic and, in retrospect, amusing incident that occurred in my own practice many years ago illuminates the intensity of some husbands’ feelings about their wives’ menopause.

It was quite late in the evening, toward the end of my consulting hours, when my receptionist told me there was a man in the waiting room who wished to see me. Male patients being a rarity in a gynecologist’s practice, I agreed to talk to him, even though he had come without appointment.

A skinny man in his fifties with a sharp and sallow face slid rather furtively through the door. His manner was an unpleasant mixture of embarrassment and aggressiveness. For a while he just fidgeted then, 

“Doc, they tell me you can fix women when they get old and crabby.”
I sidestepped the implied question and let him tell more of his story: 
“She’s driving me nuts. She won’t fix meals. She lets me get no sleep. She picks on me all the time. She makes up lies about me. She hits the bottle all day. And we used to be happily married. “She’s been to three doctors already,” he continued. "They all tell her it's the change and nothing can be done about it. Now she tells me to get out and never come back. But I won’t. It’s my home. And if anyone’s going, she is.”
     He reached into his back pocket—in those days shoulder holsters were still unknown - and quietly laid a .32 automatic on the edge of my desk.
 “If you don’t cure her, I’ll kill her.”
I looked at him doubtfully. “You think that would be better for you?” I asked cautiously, my mind reeling with all I had heard about armed madmen in doctors’ offices. But I was wrong. The man was completely rational.
 “I got advanced T.B.,” my visitor explained. “I was X-rayed again just last week. My doctor tells me that I have less than a year to live. I want to die in peace — and I can’t if she’s around.”
 My client, I later discovered, was a prominent member of the Brooklyn underworld. The proposed method of dealing with his wife apparently seemed to him quite proper and businesslike. Fortunately no calamity occurred. I accepted his wife as a patient and she responded well to intensive twice-a-week estrogen injections. Her disposition improved noticeably after three weeks, and soon she was very busy taking care of her sick husband.

I heard no more from him directly. He died on schedule and I received an invitation to his elaborate funeral. His widow felt genuine grief at his death.

Despite the fact that the years have added comic overtones to this episode, I have often been haunted by the thought that - except for the tiny stream of estrogen which I passed into her body through the hypodermic needle - this woman might have died a violent death at the hands of her own husband. Thanks to the healing power of the estrogen I administered, there had been an opportunity for reconciliation. I was deeply touched when she told me some time afterward that she had been able to instill in her husband during the last weeks of his life a sense of repentance and of religious hope for the salvation of his otherwise-lost soul.

Outright murder may be a relatively rare consequence of menopause - though not as rare as most of us might suppose. Yet the psychological equivalent of murder in the form of broken family relations and hatred between husband and wife is a common result of menopausal change. Medical statistics can never convey the staggering total of sheer misery inflicted upon such families by menopausal side-effects.

These mental changes totally alter a woman’s position in relation to her family, her community, and - most important - herself. This condition iin itself represents an overwhelming crisis in a woman’s life. Only a little more than a decade ago, an English woman physician, the late Dr. J. Malleson pinpointed a certain type of emotional disturbance typical of many women in their middle years and coined the term “menopausal negativism” for this common aberration. Until Dr. Malleson’s pioneer study in this field was published in the British medical journal Lancet in 1953, the medical profession had generally closed its eyes to this vast area of human suffering.

 The degree of mental disturbance varies widely with different persons. In some women it may manifest itself merely as slight absent-mindedness or irritability. In others, it may grow into a neurosis so severe as to make normal personal adjustments impossible. Many women endure the passing years with cow-like passivity and disinterest; and a disturbingly high number take refuge in alcohol, sleeping pills, and sometimes even in suicide.

We do not yet know precisely what determines the degree of mental disturbance associated with menopause. My own observation is that the quality of a woman’s marriage is probably one of the most important factors.

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