Walk around the fields you planted,
“Covered with your tresses only,
Robed with darkness as a garment.”
(“Hiawatha,” Longfellow, canto xiii.,
“Blessing the Corn-Fields.”)
Menstruating women were excluded from the Jewish synagogues and from the communion table of the early Christian Church: “Menstruatæ mulieres superstitiose exclusæ ab ecclesia.”—(Baronius, “Annales,” Lucca, 1758, tome 3, 266, xi.)
AFTER-BIRTH AND LOCHIÆ.
Both of these were used medicinally; the lochiæ were useful in restraining uterine hemorrhages; after-birth, dried and powdered, deprived love-philters of their power; it was used as an anti-epileptic, to relieve retention of the menses, etc. (See Flemming, “De Remediis,” p. 17.) Secundines were used in the treatment of epilepsy.—(See Etmuller, vol ii. p. 265).
HUMAN SEMEN.
Etmuller knew nothing of the remedial value of human semen beyond the fact that Paracelsus had recommended its use in some cases (vol. ii. p. 272).
Pliny mentions the use of human semen as a medicine (lib. xxviii. c. 10).