Why we got Madonna

The 1931 edition of the "Woman's Own Book of the Home" has fallen into my hands, and it shows how far women's focus of attention has shifted over the years - and why. The book is arranged alphabetically:

• Apoplexy - treatment of
• Bedstead - to clean a brass
• Calf's Head - to boil
  

Flipping through its 400 pages caused several of them to fall out so I searched for a remedy, finding only "Books - to preserve from insects" (white pepper and powdered alum). There is no cross-reference from "Insects - to keep out of books", but instead "Insects on Plants - to destroy" and the catch-all "Bugs - to kill". All in all it's a fairly disappointing publication for insects.

For the quite ordinary citizen however it has, with a few notable exceptions, everything. There's all you need to make your own bread, soap, deodorant, toothpaste and cough medicine, plus how to cobble together a sponge bag from an old hot-water-bottle.

But your food is rudimentary - Oatmeal Gruel, Boiled Cow Heel, Turnip Tops and Toast Water, which is made by leaving a slice of toast in a jug of water overnight (Strain before serving. A nourishing drink). And with no National Health Service, your healthcare is largely down to you. Needless to say it's all-action stuff and not for the squeamish:

• Leeches - to apply
• Tapeworm - to remove
• Anthrax - how to treat
  
• Diarrhoea - an Egyptian cure for (it involves pomegranates)

While you're expected to battle sickness on a broad front, it's a different front. Cancer ought to come between "Camphor - uses of" and "Candied peel - to make" but I finally tracked it down to a very short section on "Tumours". While this is often quite helpful (badly fitting corsets account for a number of cases), the facing page has a piece on cultivating nasturtiums which is twice as long.

So, today's obsessions are largely missing. On sex, there's nothing to guide you from The Wedding Reception to Breast Feeding, and little on image and beauty, since there were more basic things to attend to:

• Eyebrows - to make grow
• Hair - to prevent its falling out
• Knock Knees - to straighten (don't ask)

As well as what now seem to be omissions, there's plenty of advice which must surely be wrong - for example The simplest form of fire extinguisher is the hand grenade and, in the unswerving campaign against insects, A fresh bunch of nettles hung up in the window will prevent the entrance of flies.

Only a few years after this book hit the shops the superwomen who used it to manage their lives and families will have taken World War 2 in their stride. But with all this to get on with - and there's plenty more - it's really no wonder that women eventually decided the hell with it, and started becoming bond traders, PR consultants, astronauts and Madonna.