As a necessity for women's life, there has long been a product prototype similar to the use of sanitary napkins. In the 15th century BC, Egyptian women used soft papyrus for their menstrual needs. Hippocrates, the founder of Western medicine, wrote that the Greeks used tampons made of cotton strips wrapped around a small piece of wood in the 5th century BC. Ancient Chinese women used long white cloth towels to cope with menstruation, washed with water and alum after each change, the ancient Romans used wool, and other materials similar to "sanitary napkins" were paper (Japan), plant fibers (Indonesia), sponges and grass (Central Africa).
The Museum of Menstruation shows that most pre-modern women generally did not use menstrual products, but simply allowed menstrual blood to flow onto their clothing. Until the first half of the 20th century, women in some countries and regions still used reusable cloth strips. During the first World War, French nurses observed that the cellulose material used to bandage wounds was more able to absorb menses than cloth strips, the invention of "fiber cotton" was applied in disposable bandages and related products, nurses got inspiration, referring to the production method of disposable bandages, using cotton or cloth wrapped in cheese to make their own "disposable sanitary napkins", the birth of modern sanitary napkins. In the early 1920s, Kimberly Clark introduced the Kotex brand of sanitary napkins, which they named after a combination of "cotton" (changing the "c" to "k" in English) and "texture." At that time, all brands of sanitary napkins needed straps to secure them. Most current pads have a bonding pad that fits the underwear, so there is no need for straps.