In the late nineteenth century, menstrual madness was considered a side effect of being a woman. The main symptoms were severe menstrual cramps and "hysteria." In 1872, A physician named Robert Battey developed the treatment that would be known as Battey’s Operation, in which a surgeon removed a woman’s ovaries. This operation became a popular and common treatment for both period pain and madness, both in Europe and the United States.
The best part about gagging in the McDonald’s drive thru line over pictures of my ovaries is they weren’t even my ovaries, just the bloody insides of a random woman my mom found in Google images. I hadn't allowed myself to see the surgical photos (for a mature reason: insides are icky) and mom figured that from the passenger seat, I could’t run. She keeps pictures on her phone and likes to show them off, because the amount of endometrium found between my rectum and my uterus was "impressive" for a teenager, though it was only a clump only the size of a thumbnail. Even with this admirable mass visible in the pictures, I doubt I could sell them for $54, 000 each.
This was the final dollar amount an x-ray from one of Marilyn Monroe’s surgeries auctioned for in 1954, eight years before the end of Marilyn’s thirty-six year life. The half-million dollar photograph was from an operation relating to her endometriosis complications, a disease doctors in Marilyn's day knew only slightly less about than they know today. Marilyn had painful periods, difficulty becoming pregnant, and one known ectopic pregnancy (common in endometriosis patients). Her era of fame and endo pain followed the height of popularity for Battey’s Operation, and experts still widely suggested the removal of female reproductive organs as a one-and-done cure for menstrual pain. This is likely the reason Marilyn is said to have scribbled a handwritten note begging the surgeon to leave her organs--and potential to have children--intact. Legend states she stuck the note to her lower stomach for the surgeons to find.
Today Marilyn is the poster child for endometriosis. Her scars are sex icons and her fame remains defiant. The fun fact about her auctioned x-ray stays close to the hearts of endo patients, offering a fantasy that one day the pain will be worth something.
