Climacteric

The term climacteric was used by the ancient Greeks to identify the critical years in a person's life, and is commonly used by medical researchers and doctors to mark the menopausal period in women and the similar period in men's lives.

Astrologers in the ancient world in Europe used numerology and star patterns to ascertain when those times would affect individual people, often seeing lives in multiples of seven years, with a person's 63rd year said to be the Grand Climacteric, an age that many men and women approached with care, as evidenced by comments made by the Roman emperor Augustus. Later, the Grand Climacteric was raised to the age of [Page 417]81, again a multiple of seven. Shakespeare's “Seven Ages of Man” reflects the importance of the number seven in numerology.

The word comes from the Greek work klimakterikos, from klimakter for the step of a staircase, and first appeared in the English language in 1601, with its astrological purposes assigned in 1634, and more general application six years later. Nowadays, the medical use of the term climacteric is as a synonym for the female menopause, marking a major change in a woman's life when the menstrual cycle ends. It is also used to refer to the corresponding time in the lives of men. The International Menopause Society uses the term in its charter, defining itself as “the society for the study of all aspects of the climacteric in men and women.”