ABSTRACT
When green sickness ceased to be a variant of green jaundice, and became focused on a single age/sex group, in addition to picking up the imagery of the colour green as appropriate to a young girl on the brink of womanhood, it glanced at Trotula’s suggestion that menstrual suppression causes a colour like that of grass and, as a result, it moved alongside love sickness. In an article investigating changes in ideas about chlorosis, Chevallier (1955:5) suggested that its history could be conveniently divided into the era when sexual and menstrual problems were most blamed, and that when digestive factors were seen as the main culprits. Although such a historical division corresponds in general terms to the interests of the sources, and will be broadly followed in the division between this and the following chapter, it neglects two important points.
