This chapter analyses the menstrual cure for lovesickness in early modern medical and literary texts, suggesting how it throws important light on concepts of women, masculinity, and menstruation. In this remedy, the lovesick man is shown the bloody cloths of his mistress, so that rather than inciting desire, her body provokes revulsion. Such a strategy mitigates the contradictions of male emotion and renders them justifiable: the lover's conflicting responses are represented as not the product of internal inconsistencies but rather as the inevitable result of being confronted by two seemingly different bodies. Male sexual insecurity is thus projected onto the female body, so that the lover's misogyny functions as a means of compensating for his sense of vulnerability and powerlessness. The menstrual cure also throuws new light on a key scene in Flectcher's The Mad Lover, which depicts how sexual disgust can cure the male lover.
Keywords: menstruation, menstrual cure, masculinity, misogyny, sexual disgust, Fletcher, The Mad Lover,