ABSTRACT
A wide range of issues have been raised in the preceding six chapters and it is time to take stock. In this final chapter an attempt is made to develop and deploy a new framework within which menstruation, menstrual change and medically defined disorders of the menstruum might better be accommodated. Discussion in the first section is tied to the elucidation of three themes: cultural patterning, legitimation and medicalization. It is in large measure the function of this discussion to define the substantially unresolved tensions about periods that surface in contemporary western women’s own experiences and accounts.
