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Updated: June 14, 2025
But if a man be just, and do that which is lawful and right, And hath not eaten upon the mountains, neither hath lifted up his eyes to the idols of the house of Israel, neither hath defiled his neighbour's wife, neither hath come near to a menstruous woman,
The true cause of this fleshy mole is due both to the man and from the menstruous blood in the woman both mixing together in the cavity of the womb. The signs of a mole are these. The menses are suppressed, the appetite becomes depraved, the breasts swell and the stomach becomes inflated and hard.
The Parsees, who reverence fire, will not suffer menstruous women to see it or even to look on a lighted taper; during their infirmity the women retire from their houses to little lodges in the country, whither victuals are brought to them daily; at the end of their seclusion they bathe and send a kid, a fowl, or a pigeon to the priest as an offering.
In Brunswick people think that if a menstruous woman assists at the killing of a pig, the pork will putrefy. In the Greek island of Calymnos a woman at such times may not go to the well to draw water, nor cross a running stream, nor enter the sea. Her presence in a boat is said to raise storms.
All the ancient civilizations had such taboos upon the menstruous woman. According to Pliny, the Romans held that nothing had such marvellous efficacy as, or more deadly qualities than, the menstrual flow. The epithet Niddah, applied to a woman at that time, means "to lay under a ban."
For a like reason the Carrier Indians will not suffer a menstruous woman to cross the tracks of animals; if need be, she is carried over them. They think that if she waded in a stream or a lake, the fish would die. Amongst the civilised nations of Europe the superstitions which cluster round this mysterious aspect of woman's nature are not less extravagant than those which prevail among savages.
At any rate, although the birth of the child would seem in every respect except in the presence of blood to be more closely connected with the phenomena of pregnancy than with that of menstruation, as a matter of fact the taboos on the woman in child-bed were intimately associated with those on menstruous women.
If the Indians be stationary at the time, the women are placed outside of the camp; if on a march, they are not allowed to follow the trail, but must take a different path and keep at a distance from the main body." Among the Cheyennes menstruous women slept in special lodges; the men believed that if they slept with their wives at such times, they would probably be wounded in their next battle.
All Martial Diseases are expell'd, cured, and healed in an admirable manner by this Spirit; such as are the Bloody Flux, the Disease or Menstruous Fluxes of Women, both white and red, and all other Fluxes of the Belly, and open Sores in the Legs, or any part of the Body, together with all those Diseases, both internal and external, howsoever they are called, which bloody Mars hath caused, which I omit to nominate particularly, being well known unto the discreet Physician what Diseases are subject to the jurisdiction of Mars.
L.K. Anantha Krishna Iyer, The Cochin Tribes and Castes, i. (Madras, 1909) pp. 201-203. As to the seclusion of menstruous women among the Hindoos, see also Sonnerat, Voyage aux Indes Orientates et
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