TO WELCOME
 TO CONTENTS
 THE LUCKY WOMAN,
OR SEEING THE DOCTOR ABOUT THE MENOPAUSE
_The Curse: A Cultural History of Menstruation_ 
by Janice Delaney, Mary Jane Lupton and Emily Toth, 
Dutton 1976. 
Despite its title this book has a good sized section on various social aspects of menopause. 
Here is an overview of medical attitudes towards "treatment".
1850
Many solutions
A lucky (i.e., wealthy) woman living in London in the 1850s could, if she had the courage to talk about intimate problems with a male doctor, make an appointment with Edward Tilt. Tilt had a wide range of solutions to the problem of menopause, among them mineral water, morphine, syrup of iron and potassium, exercise, traveling, bandaging of limbs, sedatives, and abdominal belts.
1850
Bleeding preferred
His preferred method of treatment, however, was bleeding (general venesection). Tilt reasoned that although many women grew stronger during the menopause because their bodies used up the nutrition in the unexpelled blood, many others suffered from the body’s failure to dispose of it. Severe headaches were a sign that the Woman was storing up the excess blood in her head; if her arm were bled, the unneeded blood would leave the body and her well-being would be restored. Tilt also liked applying leeches—to the anus in the case of hemorrhoids but behind the ears or at the nape of the neck for menopausal disorders. Bleeding was a widely recommended procedure in the nineteenth century for many ailments; it was particularly useful for the menopause, Tilt argued, because it was an “imitation of nature.” Tilt’s bleeding of twelve ounces of blood from the arm of a 51-year-old patient is alleged to have reduced her dizziness, flushes, and perspiration.(14)
1890
Bleeding "outdated" 
A woman consulting the American gynecologist Andrew Currier in the 1890s would have been told that leeches were still an effective remedy for congested genitals but that venesection was old-fashioned and ineffectual. In his book The Menopause, Currier attacked those physicians (such as Tilt) who frightened women with their negative attitudes toward the menopause and who were, in Currier’s words, “bleeders, pukers, and purgers.” 
Castration preferred 
The great cure, according to Currier, was not bleeding but surgery. Riding on the wave of progress evoked by Robert Battey’s invention of “female castration” in 1872, Currier proclaimed its merits in the treatment of the menopause. He advocated “artificial menopause”: the removal of any organ that directly affects the menstrual process. Be thorough, he advised his colleagues. If you remove the fallopian tubes, then you might as well remove the ovaries, too, because without the tubes the ovarian function is gone. Remove the whole ovary instead of just part of one, and remove the ovaries in the case of any new growth, benign or malignant. Of course, one always stumbled across the rare patient for whom surgery offered no salvation: “This would include some who had long been subject to vicious habits, to the use of alcohol, chloral, opium, etc.” (15)
1976
Still castrating
Currier’s method is still [1976] highly favored among American doctors. Apparently, 63 percent of American women between the ages of 50 and 64 have had “artificial menopause.” (16) The methods may vary, but the end result is the same as it was almost a century ago: the literal castration of the female.
1976 
"Radiation menopause" 
 Although surgery is the preferred American technique for destroying the function of a woman's ovaries and her uterus, another is called radiation menopause. This controversial treatment can be achieved through X-ray of the pelvic area or through circulating radium in the uterus through a tube. With the latter method, there is said to be a greater risk of uterine cancer. With both methods, there are some unpleasant side effects, including uncontrollable bleeding and loss of sexual desire.
Organ transplants?
Surgery and radiation are indeed ways to curtail natural menopause. Other modern proposals for cheating nature have been monkey gland transplants and injections of the cells of an unborn lamb. One doctor has ironically suggested "grafting ‘young' ovaries into menopausal women" as a way to eliminate the process of aging.(16) 
1966 on
Estrogen- replacement
But the most widely acclaimed "cure" for the menopause, the one that made headlines in 1966, is estrogen-replacement therapy.

(14) Edward John Tilt, _The Change of Life in Health and Disease_, London 1857,  pp.52-91
(15) Andrew Currier, New York 1897,_The Menopause_, p249
(16) Peter Curzen, "Eliminating the Menopause", Practioner 208 (1972) p 387


Note: for an even earlier (1837) description, see On the final cessation of the menses
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