Social imaginary of the poisonous women: Science, metaphore and hermeneutic

Abstract

They exist so many superstitions involving the feminine sphere, which set the feminine up as the heart of a wide variety of collective imaginaries. This article analyzes one of those myths: the female that owns a poison with damaging efects on the environment, that is the menstrual flow. It makes every woman into a powerful wizard by nature, a being commanded by irrationality opposite to the objective and scientific spirit, which is distinctive of men. We can found this idea in some medical texts, from the very first “scientific” text in the Classical Antiquity, enduring even in the scientific works by the medical auctoritates up to the Renaissance and in current medical textbooks.