A medical historian’s thoughts on the menopause

Mentions of the menopause in British daily papers increased seven-fold between 2001 and 2021 and have, I’m sure, increased still further since. The word occurs almost every day on the radio, whereas it was rarely mentioned 50 years ago. In his magnificent history of medicine, which was published in 1999, the historian Roy Porter uses the menopause to illustrate the many ways that such a phenomenon can be viewed. Before he concentrates on the menopause he writes: “What has been styled, particularly by critics, ‘the medicalization of life’ cannot be understood purely or primarily as some kind of professional ramp. What has occurred is not a conspiracy by medical elites to push professional dominance into domains traditionally outside medicine’s province, but rather the destabilization of the boundaries of lay and professional competence in an age of democracy, when medical professionals themselves often feel driven to break out from the iron cages which professional strategies have…