AHS18

This paper proposes an integrative approach to thinking about menopause and uterine fibroids, drawing on evidence of these questions in medical historical texts of the nineteenth century, looking at cross-cultural comparative anthropological data, and at current biomedical research models of explanation for menopause symptomology and uterine fibroid growth. Triangulating these different perspectives, I propose a view of women's sexual ageing in modernity that takes account of evolutionary, physiological and cultural pressures on female bodies in the shift to industrial lifeways.