A medieval lady who had lost her virtue could not count on any plastic surgery to recreate the hymen. But what is natural medicine, female stratagems and a pinch of magic for? Herbs, leeches and fish bladders were in motion. The fake blushes, ambiguous oaths and ... the naivety of men also helped.
Why pretend to be a virgin? In the Middle Ages, the matter was clear:a woman should live modestly and devoutly, drawing inspiration from Mary. She also had to guard her virtue in order to find a husband, and not be among the social outcasts and the worst sinners. 
Therefore virginity was worth its weight in gold, and sometimes even life . The hymen was supposed to be like an impregnable fortress. But what if for some reasons it fell? Was there no salvation? Of course he was. After all, necessity is the mother of invention.
Inbirth with a leech
Trota of Salerno came to the aid of the "fallen" failures - Dr. Quinn from the 11th century, but living in Italy, not in the Wild West. In order to "close the vulva of women again", medieval lights a doctor advises to put leeches there . Success on the wedding night is guaranteed. The young wifey will assume that he is dealing with the woman still intact.
Trota does not end with leeches:he proposes that women should apply miraculous preparations based on deer fat, lizard fat, various salts, and even ... sulfur and mercury instead of their intimate place. At this point, it was like hell - and not because of the perplexity of these practices. The woman undergoing such therapy was simply taking, without even knowing it, a considerable health risk .
Medieval women were afraid not only of being caught in flagranti, but also of discovering their secret from the past ... (source:public domain).
But not only the Salerno expert had such ideas. Also, male doctors in emerging medical treatises advised a whole range of "miraculous" preparations for internal use:a mixture of resin and wine (Spaniard Manuel Díez de Calatayud) or glass powder and sea salt to be placed "in a known place" (the Jewish sage Maharik).
A woman with a bladder
Well, much healthier and probably more reliable was the dove or fish bladder method. It had to be filled with blood, for example dust, inserted into the vagina and placed so that it burst at the climax, filling the groom with pride.
Another variant of this hoax was intercourse during menstruation: and what if a shy wife takes her monthly blood as proof of the deflowering of her chosen one? Let us add that the fish blisters and this type of ruse were used not only by medieval ladies waiting for marriage, but also by those of light morals. Just to take my age and pretend to be young - correspondingly more expensive for customers.
But let's go back to ex-virgins and their problem with regaining virtue. They could try bathing in an infusion of certain herbs that were supposed to cause the muscles of the vagina to contract . Admittedly, if they were squeezed too tightly, there was a risk that the husband would find himself in an uncomfortable situation and even have trouble penetrating, but something for something ...
By the way, if a woman had such problems, continually preventing intercourse, she could be formally declared "non-consumable"! Then the bishop, using the opinions of the midwives attesting to the state of the lady, could dissolve her marriage (although without the right to remarry). It was possible that sometimes it paid off for women. For example, if the husband was exceptionally unpleasant to them and they had minimal influence on his choice.
Exercise the throat
Thinking about their saintly image, young ladies should also have to train… the throat. For, according to medieval romances, there was a reliable virginity test - giving the chosen one a magic horn filled with wine.
A bath in an infusion of appropriate herbs was to narrow the vagina to "virgin" sizes (source:public domain).
It is said that only a clean woman was able to empty it without shedding a drop. According to the Italian version of the legend of Tristan and Isolde ("La Tavola Ritonda"), this test was failed by six hundred and eighty-six women making their loved ones angry! On the other hand, from the same medieval tales comes some good advice on how ex-virgins are to lie. For example, you can send your husband to his bedside during the night . Or to swear an oath that testifies to chastity but is essentially ambiguous (which only the oath and her lover know about).
This was the case of the legendary Isolde, who wanted to hide her romance with Tristan from her husband. She sent a message to her lover to come to the river disguised as a beggar. There she asked him to carry her through the water. Thanks to this, the sprite could already declare to her husband, the world and God himself that no one except her wedding and indicated "beggar" had ever had her in their arms.
So even the right words and behavior were of great importance. The "sinners" should act as expected of the virgins :modestly lowered eyes in the presence of men, properly pretend confusion and embarrassment, and even fabricate blushes - blooming as if on cue when the topic of erotic pranks appeared.
A few extra pounds at the waist? For a medieval virgin, this could be the beginning of an accusation of loss of virtue (source:public domain).
It can always get worse
In those days, there was little science and much suspicion. As Diane Ducret writes in the book Forbidden Body. The history of male obsession ", the doctor did not find virginity solely on the basis of the presence of the hymen, because at the beginning of the 15th century female genital organs were for medics an unfathomable and shameful mystery . So it happened that an additional proof was a slim and narrow waist. Tighter women have been associated with unwanted in-bed activity and delivery.
The hair was divided into four. The medical encyclopedia "Colliget" by the Andalusian philosopher and physician Averroes raises the following question:is the woman who bathed in the water in which the man ejaculated and became pregnant as a result still a virgin? Such dilemmas could also arise in medieval Europe, whether Christian, Muslim or Jewish.
However, these were the exceptions. Much more often people were just wondering and checking if and with whom someone could sleep. And when the year 1487 passed, as if the Middle Ages had passed, "Hammer of the Witches" was published and Europe was teeming with new female hunters of vileness.
Witch hunters looked for victims, examining, among other things, the sex lives of the suspects. The dramas of medieval virgins, unable to drink from a magic corner, were to turn out to be nothing compared to the tragedy of thousands of innocent women burned at the stake in the name of religious paranoia and neighborly settlements.