Let's Talk About: Ancient Birth Control

This week’s blog post was written by the brilliant and multi talented Gaia Aurelia Cerva and will be about some of the methods of birth control used by people who lived a long time ago.

Enjoy!

Salve! I am Gaia Aurelia Cerva. I am your guest blogger for the week, and I will be giving you a very broad overview of historical contraceptive methods from the ancient world, which for the purposes of this article is anything before the year 700 CE. I am a perpetual student of history and not a medical professional so please, don’t try any of the following recipes.

Before we begin, I would like to cover something important since we will be talking about some very unusual remedies. It can be easy to laugh off magical amulets or pessaries made from crocodile dung as the wild guesses of silly, superstitious, or uneducated people. All humans regardless of when they were born have the same capacity for intelligence and learning, so let us firmly put this dated theory of unilinear social evolution in the dustbin where it belongs. These recipes were recorded and preserved because they appeared to work.

Now with that out of the way, let us begin in earnest. I’m going to be covering different methods of contraceptives in the ancient world, mostly covering in and around the Mediterranean, and a remedy from China.

The basic equation of conception, as understood at the time, can be broadly summed up as: semen + uterus = pregnancy. Most forms of contraception in the ancient world were therefore designed to block off the uterus, but it wasn’t the only way. Even in the early centuries of written history, there were a vast variety of methods, probably many more than what have survived for us to discuss today.

Barrier Methods

The pessary is perhaps the oldest and possibly most common form of pregnancy prevention. The name comes from the Greek word πεσσάριον (Pessarion) which means “a piece of medication soaked wool/lint inserted into the vagina”. A contemporary version of this type of pessary is a cervical cap used with spermicide. The oldest recipe we have comes from Ancient Egypt circa 1850 BCE. It prescribes a mixture of honey and acacia leaves mashed together, a piece of raw cotton was soaked in this mixture and then inserted into the vagina to block the cervix during sex. Other recipes included ingredients such as crocodile dung, natorn, or acacia gum, often mixed with honey.

Later Roman recipes for pessaries used sheep's wool soaked in vinegar, olive oil, or alum. Additionally, there is a strange object in the medical collections of the Science Museum, London. It is described as a pessary from the Roman period (200 BCE - 400 CE) is made entirely of bronze. It is unclear if this object was used as a contraceptive or if it was intended to provide support for the vagina or uterus. (Image Credit: Science Museum, London)

Condoms are a ubiquitous form of contraceptive today, but there is very little evidence of condom use of the male or female variety, before the 15th century CE. There are some tentative claims of earlier use but very little in the way of concrete evidence. In researching this article I found one little scrap of evidence with enough specificity that merits a mention. This is a variation of the Minos legend retold by Antoninus Liberalis, a Greek grammarian who wrote in the early centuries CE. He describes how a goat’s bladder was used like a female condom to protect Minos’ lover from the “snakes and scorpions” in his semen. While a legend isn’t solid evidence, this usage of the goat’s bladder as a condom resembles early extant condoms which were often made of animal bladders or intestine before rubber became the material of choice.

Oral Methods

If you’ve never heard of Silphium, that is understandable, it went extinct in ancient times. It’s last appearance in the historical record is when some of the last remaining plants were given to the Emperor Nero almost 2,000 years ago. In its heyday, Silphium was worth its weight in silver, used both as a culinary and medicinal herb. According to Pliny, it was an herb that “helped to promote menstrual discharge”. It had many other medicinal uses, but it’s contraceptive or abortive properties were its claim to fame. Silphium was most likely a member of the Giant Fennel family, however there is still some debate among scholars about which plant family it really belongs to. Silphium only grew in a small coastal section of modern day Libya, and despite the efforts of some entrepreneurial spirits, it was virtually impossible to cultivate elsewhere. It’s extinction wasn’t due to over farming alone, its limited habitat and the changing climate of North Africa in the 2nd and 3rd centuries BCE were contributing factors.

Hippocrates, the Greek physician often lauded as the Father of Western Medicine, recommended wild carrot or Queen Anne’s Lace as an oral contraceptive. Queen Anne’s Lace is still used for the same purpose in folk medicine today. Other oral methods from the Mediterranean include pennyroyal, myrrh, rue, and the pomegranate. The pomegranate would have also been a semi-magical treatment since it has several mythological connections with death, it first sprouted from the blood of the dying Adonis and was devoured by Persephone in the underworld.

From 6th c. CE China we find an oral contraceptive recipe prescribed by Sun Si-Mao a Taoist physician, also titled China’s King of Medicine, and author of comprehensive and foundational works of medicine. This method involves mercury boiled with oil for an entire day, then consumed on an empty stomach. It wasn’t clear in my sources if this was a one time or multi-dose treatment.

Manual Methods

Not all methods required medical intervention. If the basic formula of pregnancy is semen + uterus = pregnancy, then the simplest method to prevent pregnancy would be to make sure the semen never gets anywhere near the uterus in the first place. Around the world, coitus interruptus, which another name for the pull-out method, appears as an option for preventing pregnancy. Ancient Egyptian medical texts encouraged women to breastfeed for up to three years to stave off another pregnancy. Various flavors of non-vaginal intercourse were known and practiced in the ancient world and while there is a contraceptive side effect to these other kinds of sex, they didn’t show up in medical texts I surveyed as ways of avoiding pregnancy.

In the end getting pregnant or not in the ancient world was largely up to timing and luck. There is a lot of scholarly debate about how widely available medical knowledge of contraceptives was and the rates of effectiveness of many of these methods will never be known. I sincerely hope this broad overview has been enlightening. If you have any questions or would like some more information, please feel free to reach out to me at aureliacerva@gmail.com.

-Gaia Aurelia Cerva

Gaia Aurelia Cerva is a perpetual student of history with a B.A. in Religious Studies with a special focus on the Ancient Mediterranean, Early Christianity, and contemporary grassroots traditions. When not lurking in a museum basement to earn a living, Cerva can be found dancing, reading, wandering in nature, cosplaying, weaving, and sewing.

Thank you Gaia for your awesome piece! I for one am glad that I am living in the day of modern birth control methods! Next week we’ll be featuring a piece by the unstoppable CQPublic about…. Until then stay safe, you are worth protecting.

-Erin

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