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An article published in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease describes how society views the postmenopausal woman: "she finds herself... reduced by the climacteric to a shriveled shell of a woman, used up, sucked dry, de-sexed and, by comparison with her treasured remembrances of bygone days of glory and romance, fit only for the bone heap."[546]
The "grassroots" movement of women demanding help during their perimenopausal years in the early 1970's was supported - even initiated - by the pharmaceutical industry.[547] One ad shows an older lady holding tightly to the arm of a distinguished looking gentlemen, with the headline "Menrium treats the menopausal symptoms that bother him the most."[548] Ayerst ran a series of advertisements with the caption, "He is suffering from menopause because of her." "Her" was a woman in an unmistakable stance of protest that "he," the doctor, had the misfortune to encounter.[549]
[546] Sillman, LR. "Femininity and Paranoidism." Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 143(1966):163-170.
[547] Robbins, J. Reclaiming Our Health Tiburon, CA: HJ Kramer, 1996:149.
[548] Ibid.
[549] Wilbush, J. "Confrontation in the Climacteric." Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 87(1994):342-347.