Resetting Her Biological Clock: Menstrual Induction in Imperial Rome

This article investigates the array of techniques used in the Roman Imperial period to induce menstruation - techniques such as cupping, bloodletting, inserting pessaries, ingesting or applying materia medica, or wearing amulets - and seeks to understand the range of social contexts in which they might have been used. This study focuses particularly on how menstrual induction technologies could be deployed in agonistic settings within the medical marketplace, such as competitions between healthcare providers or conflicts between different healthcare consumers who sought to control women's reproductive health. This category would have included not only menstruators themselves, but also menstruators' family members, enslavers, employers, and physicians. By examining the positive evidence for menstrual induction in the Roman period and using the methodological tools of critical speculation and reading against the grain to explore the interpretive possibilities that evidence presents, this paper demonstrates how menstrual induction technologies could be deployed both to grant and to deprive menstruators of agency over their own bodies, as well as to fortify or undermine hierarchies of gender, class, and civic status.