Notices by Vagina Museum (vagina_museum@masto.ai), page 4

It's been a while since we've shown you a cursed patent, so we're delighted to ruin your day with this Vaginal Appliance, patented by Anton Svejnar in 1911. Can you guess what it does?

If you are wondering just how many times an author needs to use the words "human female" or construct sentences which are weirdly specific about internal anatomy belonging to the same "human female" before we conclude they're a martian, the answer is only twice. It's weird once, it's *very* weird twice.

Wagner's pessary is a pretty simple, if a little bit cursed, piece of kit. You pop it in the vagina, inflate it, and it sits there supporting the uterus. It has an extra pipe coming out of it to conduct menstrual fluid.

Now, we've shown you a cursed old-timey inflatable vaginal doohickey before*, so what's so special about Wagner's that we have decided to doom you with the knowledge of it today?

*here, ICYMI https://masto.ai/@vagina_museum/112122667010921975

On reading the accompanying patenting documentation for the Pessary, we are *convinced* that Edward Wagner was, in fact, an alien from a planet which had access to medical textbooks but had never actually made contact with humans before.

The purpose of the invention, in Wagner's own words, is "to support the womb of the human female and at the same time to receive the menstrual fluid from the womb of said female and conduct it through and beyond the mouth of the vagina of the same."

It's time to dredge up another patent for a horrid old-timey vaginal gizmo. Today we'd like to introduce you to the simply-titled Pessary, patented by Edward Wagner in 1891...

Callout post: Human papillomavirus.

This little guy might look cute, but HPV causes almost all cervical cancers. Between cervical screening and vaccination against HPV, cervical cancer could be virtually eliminated.

Here's two mice from the study. The mouse on the left is not in the late luteal phase; the mouse on the right is. It might look subtle in a photo, but the mouse on the left is very docile, while the mouse on the right is twisting around, splaying its limbs, and has also defecated.

Obviously we can't talk to spiny mice and ask them about their emotions, but the study indicated that before menstruation, the mice showed a stronger stress response, as well as metabolic changes that made them hungrier. Which sounds a lot like PMS in humans.

You can read the entire study on PMS-style behaviours in spiny mice here https://academic.oup.com/humrep/article/34/2/308/5248532

P.S. No matter how much you feel like it, please don't bite scientists when you're due on. You don't have the excuse of being a mouse.

The spiny mice in this study were undergoing frequent tests to examine their cycles. This included regularly being taken out of their cage to be weighed and undergo a procedure called vaginal lavage.

Vaginal lavage involves filling the vagina with liquid and sampling that instead of taking a swab. Mice aren't great candidates for swabs, because they are very tiny, and also swabbing sometimes tricks their body into thinking it's pregnant.

Spiny mice have a very short menstrual cycle compared to other mammals that menstruate: they go through an entire cycle in 8 or 9 days. This makes them a useful species to study as you can observe them repeatedly throughout their short cycles.

During the late luteal phase of their cycle - the stage of the cycle before menstruation, spiny mice were more likely to do the following things:
-squeak loads
-hide in the corner of their cage
-resist or try to escape handling
-isolate themselves from other mice
-bite their handlers
-eat way more

Please feel free to reply with "relate" if any of these behaviours feels like a big mood to you.

Since the spiny mice were being frequently handled and undergoing tests on their cycles *anyway*, the researchers decided to create a tool to track their behaviour throughout the cycle, and see if they exhibited behaviour changes.

Spoiler: they did.

Is premenstrual syndrome (PMS) a uniquely human phenomenon? Possibly not! Let's take a look at a 2018 study by Nadia Bellofiore and colleagues, who found evidence of PMS symptoms in spiny mice, the only rodent known to menstruate...

So your time is now. If you'd like to back Menopause: What's Changed, please donate what you can before midnight tonight! https://www.gofundme.com/f/r9tszw

And the final reason that we chose a clock motif for our exhibition design is for accessibility. Some of our visitors have mentioned they'd like more obvious cues as to how to navigate an exhibition. So we're helping you all start at midnight and follow the numbers!

Our menopause exhibition will also take you through time. We start in antiquity and progress to the present. We explore the journey from millennia of silence to the vibrant cultural scene which is beginning to blossom.

Speaking of ticking clocks, those of you who clicked through (or are diligent about clearing your cache) might have noticed the new clock imagery in visuals for this exhibition. So we're thrilled to tell you that yes! The exhibition will have a clock aesthetic!

There's lots of reasons that we chose this design. Most importantly, we as a culture are afraid of time. For women, we talk about the "biological clock" as if it's the Doomsday Clock. But time is neutral. Time is... just time.

It's the last few hours before we close our #Menopause fundraiser. The clock is ticking! Will you join hundreds of people in supporting an exhibition that no arts or heritage funder would? https://www.gofundme.com/f/r9tszw