ABSTRACT
It is also a piece of policy with the women, upon any difference with their husbands, to make that [menstruation] an excuse for a temporary separation … This custom is so generally prevalent among the women, that I have frequently known some of the sulky dames leave their husbands and tent for four or five days at a time, and repeat the farce twice or thrice a month, while the poor men have never suspected the deceit, or if they have, delicacy on their part has not permitted them to enquire into the matter (18th-century arctic explorer Samuel Hearne cited in Abel 1993: 22).
