Women managed their periods for thousands of years before disposable pads and tampons existed, using whatever absorbent materials were available in their environment. Softened plant fibers, moss, rags, animal skins, and homemade cloth pads all served as menstrual products across different cultures and centuries. Some women simply bled into their clothing. The shift to commercial, disposable products didn’t begin until the late 1800s, and even then, adoption was slow.
Ancient Plant-Based Solutions
The earliest recorded menstrual products were made from plants. In ancient Egypt, women softened papyrus, a grass-like aquatic plant, and used it as an internal absorbent, functioning much like an early tampon. In ancient Greece, Hippocrates described tampons made from lint wrapped around a small piece of wood, used as early as the 5th century B.C. These weren’t mass-produced items. They were improvised from local materials, shaped by hand, and discarded after use.
Indigenous peoples in North America used dried moss in a similar way. A 1709 account from the colonial Southeast describes women wearing a string around the waist with a second string running between the legs, holding a wad of moss in place. Moss wasn’t a random choice. Sphagnum moss absorbs liquid about three to four times faster than cotton and holds significantly more of it. It also distributes moisture evenly, resists odor, and feels softer against the skin. These properties made it a remarkably effective natural pad, and it was later adopted for wound dressings during World War I for the same reasons.
The Era of Rags and Free Bleeding
For much of European history, menstrual management was strikingly simple. Historian Sara Read has concluded that many medieval women just bled into their clothes. Those who did use something typically placed rags between their thighs or pinned cloth to their undergarments. There was no standard product, no widely shared technique. Women worked with whatever fabric scraps they had.
By the 18th and 19th centuries, European women were using woven fabric or flannel to make homemade cloth pads. These were washed and reused, though the process was far from convenient. Menstruation carried deep social stigma, which meant drying these cloths had to be done discreetly, often hidden from view. The shame surrounding periods wasn’t just cultural background noise. It actively shaped how women handled their periods, keeping solutions private, improvised, and rarely discussed.
Sanitary Belts and Homemade Pads
Before adhesive strips existed, there was no way to stick a pad to underwear. Instead, women used sanitary belts: elastic webbing worn around the waist with clips at the front and back. A washable cloth pad, sometimes called a “sanitary towel,” would be secured between the two clips, held in place against the body. These belts were the standard method for decades, marketed under names like “Shaped Towel Suspender.”
Sanitary belts remained the primary way to wear a pad all the way until the 1970s. In 1969, Stayfree introduced the first adhesive pads that could attach directly to underwear, and belts rapidly fell out of use. But for generations of women before that, the belt-and-clip system was simply how periods were managed. It was bulky, sometimes uncomfortable, and required regular adjustment, but it was a significant step up from pinning rags to undergarments.
The First Commercial Products
Johnson & Johnson released what were likely the first commercially available disposable pads in 1896, sold under the name Lister’s Towels (also labeled “Sanitary Napkins for Ladies”). They were a commercial failure. Women were too embarrassed to be seen buying them. The stigma around menstruation made it nearly impossible to advertise these products openly, and store clerks were often male, adding another layer of discomfort to the purchase.
The modern tampon followed a few decades later. In 1931, a doctor named Earle Haas filed a patent for a tampon with an applicator, made from a tightly bound strip of dense cotton attached to a removal string. He received the patent in 1933, and the design became the foundation for Tampax. Even then, widespread adoption took years. Many women continued using cloth pads and belts well into the mid-20th century, partly out of habit and partly because tampons raised their own set of cultural anxieties about inserting products internally.
Why Solutions Varied So Widely
There was never a single universal answer to period management before commercial products. What women used depended almost entirely on geography, climate, and available materials. Papyrus grew along the Nile. Sphagnum moss thrived in wet northern climates. Cotton and linen were available where textile production existed. In regions without abundant absorbent plants, animal skins, grass, or wool filled the gap.
Economics mattered too. Fabric was expensive for most of human history, so dedicating cloth to menstrual use was a luxury many women couldn’t afford. Free bleeding into dark-colored clothing or old garments was often the most practical option, not a preference but a reality shaped by limited resources. The idea that every woman throughout history had a dedicated menstrual product is a modern assumption. For most of the past, periods were managed quietly, individually, and with whatever was on hand.