ABSTRACT
Nowadays, we can hardly imagine a world without hormones. We have to travel in time to find other worlds that are not yet inhabited by them. Imagine a scene on a lazy Sunday afternoon in the late nineteenth century. Ladies are chattering about the exciting events of the past days. If we could eavesdrop on these conversations, we would hear detailed, ultimate accounts of how these women try to cope with daily life. Maybe we are lucky and we can overhear them exchanging experiences about pregnancy and delivery. We will never know precisely which words women used in those days to express themselves, but we know one thing for sure: women did not refer to hormones to explain their lives. Simply because the very word hormones did not exist in the nineteenth century.
