In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, medical researchers have used the presence of the hymen, or lack thereof, as founding evidence of physical diseases such as "womb-fury." If not cured, womb-fury would, according to these early doctors, result in death. The cure, naturally enough, was marriage, since a woman could then go about having sexual intercourse on a "normal" schedule that would stop womb-fury from killing her.

When you eat dirt for the first time and leave your family to build a shack in the woods