In The Age of The Toxic Blood investigates how menopause, along with its symptoms, was viewed and used to create a medical system that marginalized and dismissed the needs of aging women. My tintypes are based on medical journal articles from the mid-19th century, written by male doctors, that pathologize menopause and provide “treatments” for it. The descriptions of the sudden-onset symptoms, which include a rapid succession of neurological symptoms (heightened sensitivity to temperature, and noise, epileptic seizures, irritability etc) and physiological reaction (migraines, incontinence, vomiting, paleness, loss of consciousness etc), are usually exaggerated and often indicate hysteria and mental instability with violent behaviors as the end result of the conditions. The doctors’ explanation for the “disease” is the rapid decline of the organs as a result of toxic blood building up in the female body after the secession of menstruation. Hence their suggested treatment is reducing the blood volume by incisions into the labia and the cervix or attaching leeches to the cervix. They also recommend reducing “inflammation” by injecting cold water into the rectum. Chemical remedies were also suggested as treatments, including silver nitrate, bromide salts, lavender oil, ether and acids, which are interestingly also used for the wet plate collodion photographic process that was discovered about the same time these articles were written. As I’m taking my self-portrait tintypes using some of the same chemistry that was used to “treat” menopause, I am not only thinking about the lack of medical knowledge in women’s care due to centuries of misogyny and body politics, but also about our present time when healthcare in America is driven by ideology, hate and by the denial of the use of medical science in public health policies, which has far advanced since Victorian times.
