1. Introduction: 'Those Sweet and Benign Humours that Nature Sends Monthly': Reading Menstruation and Vaginal Bleeding. 2. What a small Excess is called Flooding': The Language of Menstruation and Transitional Bleedings. 3. Having the Benefit of Nature': Menarche and Female Adolescence. 4. 'Full sixteen and never yet had those': Representations of Early or Delayed Menarche 5. 'Women's Monthly Sickness': Accounting for Menstruation 6. 'Wearing of the Double Clout': Dealing with Menstrual Flow in Practice and in Religious Doctrine. 7. 'The Flower of Virginity': Hymenal Bleeding and Becoming a Woman. 8. The 'Cleansing of the Flowers after the Birth': Managing Pregnancy and Post-Partum Bleeding. 9. 'Women Grieve to Thinke they Must be Old': Representations of Menopause. 10. Conclusion

In early modern English medicine, the balance of fluids in the body was seen as key to health. Menstruation was widely believed to regulate blood levels in the body and so was extensively discussed in medical texts. Sara Read examines all forms of literature, from plays and poems, to life-writing, and compares these texts with the medical theories.

Sara Read is a Lecturer in English in the Department of English and Drama, Loughborough University.