The symptoms of Menopause – episodes of heat, emotional mood swings, depression, sexual dysfunction, and even osteoporotic fractures have been mentioned in early texts by the ancient Hippocratic and Aristotle schools of health and hygiene.

Historically also a lower age at menopause was range documented in earlier times. This rose to the range of 50-51 years in the present era.

Synthetic estrogen was developed in 1938. Medical industry (Merk Pharmaceuticals) entered the scenario of menopause in a big way and dominated the center stage.

In Ancient Greece, at least 50 percent of women died by the age of 34. Additionally, the ancients believed that women were inferior to men and that a woman’s value was based on fertility, so menopausal women were not the focus of much literature or study.

By the Victorian era, women’s reproductive health in general and menopause in particular were the focus of deep distrust. Physicians believed that there was a link between the womb and the brain, making all women susceptible to insanity.

The Victorians thought that a woman’s ovaries “were the seat of feminine essence and all that was virtuous in women sprang from them.” It follows then that if the ovaries were diseased or stopped functioning (as they do in menopause), then a woman was not of sound mind.