| SHS002-Birth Control Dung |
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IntroAllie: Welcome to the Sex History Show, a meandering walk across the landscape os sex history. THis is history in a whole new light, though. Behind every tree, and under every rock, we'll find the sex that really drives history. John: This is a frank, though polite, discussion about sex history. So, if you are offended by this, please stop listening now. Allie: I'm Allie, and these are my co-hosts. John: I'm John. Randal: I'm Randal. John: OK, let's look behind a few bushes. BodyAllie: Alright, Randal. In our last show, you promised how we got that funny shape on our Valentine's cards. John: And how in the world it is related to crocodile dung! Allie: Well, it's a long story that starts at least 12,000 years ago in a cave in Southern France.
John: Come on! What do cave paintings have to do with crocodile dung? Allie: Or hearts? Randal: Well, this painting shows a man wearing a condom while having sex1. John: Wow! I bet that's not part of the regular tour! Allie: Isn't there also a painting of one in ancient Egypt? Randal: Yeah, around 3,000 years old2. It's really easy to think that we moderns invented birth control, but the truth is that humans have been manipulating their reproduction for a really long time. Allie: What were these condoms made out of?
Randal: It's hard to say for the really ancient ones, since the oldest surviving condom is from 16403. The ones in museums are made of pig intestines, though the famous womanizer Casanova made sure his were made of linen4! Allie: That doesn't sound very effective! Or comfortable!Randal: Maybe not, though sometimes the focus was on disease prevention rather than pregnancy prevention. Allie: That's really interesting, but what does it have to do with Valentine's Day hearts John: Or crocodile dung? Don't forget the crocodile dung! Randal: We'll get there. First you need to look at what other methods the ancients had to control birth. The first really important breakthrough was probably just realizing that having sex made women pregnant. Some stone-age cultures thought child-spirits were found in certain fruits and impregnated the woman when she ate them. Some blamed the weather or celestial objects for their children5. John: Surely, though, the groups who raised animals must have worked it out. Randal: That seems likely. Once you understand this, you can remain abstinent when you don't want children, for example. John: Well, that's no fun!
Allie: Not necessarily. Sexual play without penetration is described quite vividly in the 2500-year-old Kama Sutra. Plus, many, especially in ancient India and China, practiced withdrawal methods6, either with or without ejaculation afterwards. Randal: On a darker side, abstinence was probably often just men making sure their wives were abstinent, while they had sex with someone else. John: Yeah, even in the modern era, reliance on abstinence methods increased the number of visits men took to prostitutes - with unfortunate consequences in disease transmission7. Allie: And that withdrawal method isn't very effective. Did ancient people have anything else? Randal: A few groups, notably in India, thought that a woman was more fertile during parts of her period. That might have been effective, but they thought that the best way to get a woman pregnant was to have sex with her during her period8! The first case I know of where people got this right as a method of contraception was in the 17th and 18thcentury when some African and some Native American women independently worked out that they could monitor cervical mucus to avoid pregnancies9. Allie: Or stay close to her menstruation! John: Well, there's one more low-tech method to prevent pregnancy. Women could usually suppress ovulation by continuing to breastfeed. Allie: Well, you can only do that for so long! So, when did we come up with higher-tech methods? Randal: Well, by the time we reach the Classical era, there are all sorts of interesting approaches. As early as 4000 years ago, Egyptian mummies were often buried with recipes for birth control methods so they wouldn't get pregnant in the afterlife10.
Randal: That's right. They included all kinds of crazythings, including crocodile dung! John: Woohoo! There it is - wait a minute! Crocodile dung in your vagina? No wonder it prevented pregnancies: Ewwww! Randal: And they had a lot of other strange ingredients, like acacia gum, sour milk, some minerals, and honey.
Randal: The really interesting thing is that many of these ingredients have been shown by modern researchers to havespermicidal properties or to inhibit the sperm from entering the cervical mucus11,12. John: Was this just an Egyptian discovery? Randal: No. The Greeks used cedar rosin, myrtle, wine, alum, and lead13. Some Indian women usedelephant dung and water14 The Chinese used mercury15.Another Greek suggested that women drink the water blacksmiths used to cool metal16. John: Lead and mercury? Those are really poisonous. Allie: They are. Probably they acted to poison the fetus, resulting in a spontaneous abortion. The difference between prevention of conception and abortionof a fetus was pretty subtle early in pregnancyto the ancients. Most culturesdidn't really distinguish between these two cases until much later17. John: But this still musthave been very harmful to the women taking these concoctions! Randal: I don't doubt it, but, to be fair, they sometimes gave contraceptives to men that were pretty dangerous, too, includingsome drugs that stank and caused ulcers, nausea, stomach damage, and headcongestion18. John: <shudder> Weren't there any goodcontraceptive drugs?
Randal: Well, there was one that might have been. Silphium is shrouded in mystery. It only grew along the coast in what is now Libya, but the entire ancient world wanted it. Allie: As a contraceptive?
it was printed on coins. John: Sounds like snake oil to me! Randal: Could be, but another member of thisplant's family, wild carrot, has been found to induce abortions19. Sadly, we can't test this out, becausethe last stalk of silphium was given to Emperor Nero in the 1stcentury AD. Allie: It went extinct? Randal: No one knew how to cultivate it, andthe ancients apparently overgrazed and over harvested the area where the plantgrew. Allie: OK, but are you ever going to tell uswhat this has to do with the Valentine's Day heart? Randal: Sure. You can see the seed of thisplant on a lot of ancient coins. Avery distinctive shape with two lobes connected over a pointed bottom. Just like our Valentine's heart! A lot of scholars thinkthat this is the real origin of this symbol20. Next ShowJohn: Wow, that's pretty interesting. We'll put a picture of one on on our web site and throw one in our show notes, too. All this talk about contraception has got me itching to talk about something a little later. How about, next time, I introduce you two to the most important person in the history of sex. Allie: That's sounds like a great idea, John! Well, until next time, you can visit us at SexHistoryShow.com. You can check out our show notes and discussion in the forum. Additional General Reference
Extra good stuffDuring the Middle Ages in Europe, magicians advised women towear the testicles of a weasel on their thighs or hang its amputated foot fromaround their necks (Lieberman, 1973). Other amulets of the time were wreaths ofherbs, desiccated cat livers or shards of bones from cats (but only the pureblack ones), flax lint tied in a cloth and soaked in menstrual blood, or theanus of a hare. It was also believed that a woman could avoid pregnancy bywalking three times around the spot where a pregnant wolf had urinated. In morerecent New Brunswick, Canada, women drank a potion of dried beaver testiclesbrewed in a strong alcohol solution. And, as recently as the 1990s, teens in Australia have used candy bar wrappers as condoms (Skuy, Percy. (1995). Tales of Contraception. Toronto, Canada: Janssen-Ortho Inc. Notes
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