ABSTRACT
The short-term symptoms of the menopause affect 25–50% of women. Although the ancients were aware of the menopause and used menstrual inducers in a vain effort to restore normal menstruation, the subject of the ‘change of life’ received scant attention from the medical profession until the eighteenth century. In Ancient Greece the menopause heralded a time of great social change for women. Joel Wilbush displayed his extensive knowledge of the menopause in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in an Historical Perspective contained in The Menopause, a celebration of the climacteric, and edited by John Studd and Malcolm Whitehead. At the beginning of the nineteenth century Gardanne of France wrote the first book entirely dedicated to the menopause and made the condition the focus of medical and lay attention. Robert Wilson applied the concept of cyclical hormonal therapy as treatment for the menopause and it became known as hormone replacement therapy.
