Caroline Henaghan

Premenstrual Tensions in the 1830-1930 Archive: Taking a Medical History of Disordered Menstruation

This project aims to explore the mid-late nineteenth and early twentieth century texts and materials that refer to women’s menstrual health and premenstrual symptoms.

It argues that Victorian doctors’ diagnosis of ‘disordered menstruation’ has influenced the socio-medical nosology of the modern premenstrual disorders and contributed to persisting hegemonic constructions of the menstruating woman as pathologically ‘mad, bad or sad’.

The project will further develop understanding of the medical, legal and socio-political regimes of knowledge that have contributed to the modern medicalisation of menstruation and psychologisation of the premenstrual disorders.