er sacred places, and it was sometimes thought best to
prohibit the presence of women altogether.[369] The Anglo-Saxon
Penitentials declared that menstruating women must not enter a church. It
appears to have been Gregory II who overturned this doctrine.

In our own time the slow disintegration of primitive animistic
conceptions, aided certainly by the degraded conception of sexual
phenomena taught by mediaeval monks--for whom woman was "_templum
aedificatum super cloacam_"--has led to a disbelief in the more salutary
influences of the menstruating woman. A fairly widespread faith in her
pernicious influence alone survives. It may be traced even in practical
and commercial--one might add, medical--quarters. In the great
sugar-refineries in the North of France the regulations strictly forbid a
woman to enter the factory while the sugar is boiling or cooling, the
reason given being that, if a woman were to enter during her period, the
sugar would blacken. For the same reason--to turn to the East--no woman is
employed in the opium manufactory at Saigon, it being said that the opium
would turn and become bitter, while Annamite women say that it is very
difficult for them to prepare opium-pipes during the catamenial
period.[370] In India, again, when a native in charge of a limekiln which
had gone wrong, declared that one of the women workers must be
menstruating, all the women--Hindus, Mahometans, aboriginal Gonds,
etc.,--showed by their energetic denials that they understood this
superstition.[371]

In 1878 a member of the British Medical Association wrote to the _British
Medical Journal_, asking whether it was true that if a woman cured hams
while menstruating the hams would be spoiled. He had known this to happen
twice. Another medical man wrote that if so, what would happen to the
patients of menstruating lady doctors? A third wrote (in the _Journal_ for
April 27, 1878): "I thought the fact was so generally known to every
housewife and cook that meat would spoil if salted at the menstrual
period, that I am surprised to see so many letters on the subject in the
_Journal_. If I am not mistaken, the question was mooted many years ago in
the periodicals. It is undoubtedly the fact that meat will be tainted if
cured by women at the catamenial period. Whatever the rationale may be, I
can speak positively as to the fact."

It is probably the influence of these primitive ideas which has caused
surgeons and gynaecologists to d