In ancient China, women were to be checked to see if they had a virgin before they got married, and the society at that time regarded women's chastity as extremely important.
In the TV series "Do You Know", the fourth lady Mo Lan designed a secret private meeting with the sixth son of the Earl's Court, Liang Han, and made her belly bigger, and suddenly she was at a disadvantage in the marriage relationship, in order to protect the reputation of the family, the old lady of the Sheng family was even ready to beat her to death, this plot is not an exaggeration at all.
In ancient times, even if it was a small family, marrying a daughter-in-law also attached great importance to the chastity of a woman, not to mention an official eunuch like the Sheng family. So with ancient medical technology, how to accurately identify a woman's chastity?
In the Jin Dynasty handed down in the "Naturalist" recorded such a method, with cinnabar to feed the female "Shougong", most of them think that it is a gecko, and some think that it is a lizard, and when the cinnabar fed is enough for seven catties, the whole body of the "Shougong" will turn red. At this time, it is mashed, and then the water from the well in the early morning, mixed with "Shounomiya sand", and dotted on the woman's arm, will form a red mark, and as long as you do not have sex with the man, the color will not fade.
According to historical records, as early as the Qin Dynasty, there was already a "palace guard", it is said that at that time, Qin Shi Huang was very concerned about his mother Empress Dowager Zhao's face, and this matter once became the biggest scandal of the Qin royal family.
After the killing of the empress dowager's first concubine, Qin Shi Huang began to vigorously rectify the world style, commending chaste and loyal women in various places, and it was also at this time that the practice of "guarding the palace sand" for unmarried women was prevalent among the people.
There is also a theory that Qin Shi Empress was obsessed with the art of immortality, listened to the slander of the warlock, and collected boys and girls in various places to help him make alchemy, and in order to confirm the identity of the virgin, the Taoist priest invented the "palace guard".
This Xi custom has been passed down until the Song Dynasty, and was carried forward under the influence of Cheng Zhu Lixue, and there was even a superstitious phenomenon of "Shougong Sha" in the folk area at that time. After the Yuan Dynasty entered the Central Plains, as a minority regime, they were not as fanatical about blood as the Han people, and this Xi was no longer prevalent, and it was directly lost in the Ming Dynasty.
From a scientific point of view, this method of identification lacks basis, but the production method of "Shougong Sand" does exist in many historical classics, and there is a view that a special element will be produced in the body of a woman in the ** process, which reacts with the "Shougong Sand" on the body, which will cause it to disappear.
Professor Carsten of the United States conducted a similar study, and he stumbled upon a significant increase in sex hormone levels in several chameleons that died after mating in the laboratory. As a result, some people speculated that the principle of "Shougong Sand" may be the same, but because it is impossible to reproduce the ancient formula, it is impossible to conduct experiments, and the facts remain to be verified.
There are still many people who think that "Shougong Sand" is just a lie of the ancients to restrain women from cleaning themselves. Li Shizhen mentioned this method in the "Compendium of Materia Medica", and his opinion on this is "probably not true".
It is conceivable that under the constraints of feudal etiquette, women will always maintain a sense of awe and shame, and even if they find something unusual, they will not dare to discuss the matter of the bed with others. In this way, the requirements of the feudal patriarchal society for women's chastity have also been met, and no one will care about the effect of "guarding the palace sand".
In ancient China, there were many ways to identify women's chastity, most of which had no scientific basis, and the most outrageous was the "water drop method". If a woman's blood drops into the water and does not disperse, it means that the woman is a virgin, and if the blood droplets immediately scatter, it means that the woman is unclean.
In addition, there is also the "dust watching method", which makes the woman strip off her lower clothes, then puts a basin of ash under her crotch, and then uses chicken feathers to pluck the woman's nose to make her sneeze and observe whether the dust is raised.
In ancient times, it was very terrible for a woman to lose her virginity, in a feudal society where men were inferior to women, the social status of women themselves was not as good as that of men, once she lost her virginity before marriage, her situation would be more difficult, whether it was in her husband's family or her own family, she would lose all her right to speak. The husband's family has the right to send her back to her parents' family, and her mother's family will be disgraced because of this, and the best outcome for her may be suicide.
But in ancient times, there was no scientific way, and it could only be distinguished through these so-called rules handed down by the ancestors, which led to many unjust, false and wrongful cases, and many innocent women lost their lives.
To put it bluntly, either method is an exploitation of women's sexual freedom, they never regard women as human beings, but as men's property, and checking women's chastity is also to ensure the integrity of their property.