Sex In The Centuries

It seems that as long as a man and a woman have been making babies ....

Horn Condom or Animal Love .....

..... they have also been trying to  stop making them as well.

For instance a cave painting found in France, that researchers believe could be 15,000 years old, apparently depicts what some think is the first illustration of a man wearing a type of condom ... or maybe not.

There are ancient Egyptian documents dating back to 1850 B.C. describing how pessaries (objects or concoctions inserted into the vagina to block sperm), were made of crocodile dung, honey, and sodium carbonate, and were a common contraceptive method. Crocodile dung is actually slightly alkaline, like modern-day spermicides, so this method might actually have worked.

In the Egyptian medical manuscript, the Ebers Papyrus which dates from 1550 BC, women were advised to grind dates, acacia tree bark, and honey together into a paste, apply this mixture to seed wool, and insert the cotton seed wool vaginally for use as a pessary. Despite its primitive nature, the tampon would have worked, because acacia ferments into lactic acid, an ingredient used in today's spermicides. There is also an opium diaphragm, described from ancient Sumatra, which was when the women used the pod of the opium plant as a diaphragm during intercourse. But the Egyptians also used condoms made of thin linen.

King Minos of Crete was alleged to have used a goat's bladder as a female condom around 3,000 BC, and another such device was one of the oldest known condoms, made from a pig's intestine. There is  even a user manual that suggests soaking it in warm milk before use, to make it softer and more supple.

Queen Anne’s Lace seeds (also known as wild carrot), have long been used as a contraceptive. Hippocrates described this usage over two millennia ago, and the knowledge persisted until recent times. The seeds act by blocking progesterone synthesis, thus disrupting implantation and are most effective as emergency contraception within eight hours of exposure to sperm (a sort of “morning after” form of birth control). Taking Queen Anne’s Lace led to no, or only very mild side effects (like a bit of constipation), and women who stopped taking it could conceive and rear a healthy child after a month or so. The only danger, it seemed, was confusing the plant with similar-looking, but potentially deadly poison hemlock, and water hemlock .... so not a Saturday night, post pub quickie fixer.

Of course the Greeks could never be satisfied with just the right answer, so in the 1st-century, the physician Dioscorides volume on herbal medicine, also suggested using an infusion of the Pennyroyal plant. The ancient Greeks and Romans used this plant for many things such as flavouring, cooking and drinking, as well as to induce menstruation and abortion. But drinking too much of this plant can be toxic and lead to organ failure. The Romans, also used pepper .... although I can't help but wince at the thought about how that may have worked or even worse, felt.

Oddly, at least one plant may have been very good, Silphium (a member of the fennel family that grew on the shores of Cyrenaica in present-day Libya), which the Roman, Pliny the Elder recorded the use of as a contraceptive. It was reportedly effective for contraception when taken once a month as a tincture. It could also be used as emergency birth control, either orally or vaginally, as an abortifacient .... however by the second century AD, the plant had apparently become extinct, a likely result of over harvesting. Soranus, a gynaecologist from 2nd-century Greece, described Common Rue, a blue-green herb with feathery leaves as a potent abortifacient.

The Early Asian Glans Condom - With Ribbing Effect!

Other cultures have had their own methods or  plants such as Blue Cohosh, used by Native Americans. Dong Quai, also known as Chinese angelica was used in China. Women in Latin America have traditionally eaten Common Rue in salads, as a contraceptive, and drunk rue tea as emergency contraception or to induce an abortion. In Asia the Japanese and Chinese were fans of the glans condom, which only covered the tip of the man’s member, and could be made from anything from animal intestines to silk paper, animal horns and even tortoise shells.

In the USA, women during the times of American slavery would chew on the bark of cotton root to prevent pregnancy. Cotton root bark contains substances that interfere with the corpus luteum, which is the hole left in the ovary when ovulation occurs.

More dangerous contraceptive practices included the drinking of lead and mercury by Chinese women thousands of years ago. This deadly potion was used by concubines in ancient China in order to remain sterile. These substances are known to cause conditions like kidney failure, brain damage and, of course, death.

Then there were the plainly stupid ones (some of which also lasted until the last century) .... In 10th-century Persia, women were told to jump backwards seven or nine times after intercourse to dislodge any sperm, as those were believed to be magical numbers.

Medieval cultures had some creative ways to stave off babies, like tying a weasel's testicles around their inner thighs. According to the myth, if one takes the two testicles of a weasel and wraps them up, binding them to the thigh of a woman who also wears a weasel bone, she will no longer be able to conceive. Obviously, the method is nonsense (just in case someone is thinking of trying it). In the 16th century in Canada, women sought to prevent conception by soaking dried beaver testicles in a concentrated solution of alcohol, and then deeply drinking the resulting infuse.

Blacksmith's water was another bit of advice  .... According to Soranus, a Greek gynaecologist practising during the 2nd century A.D. women were told to drink the water that blacksmiths used to cool metal as a birth control method. Despite the fact that it's not really understood why someone believed this, women were volunteering even during the First World War, to work in factories with lead, just so it would keep them sterile. The practice could lead to neurological problems, kidney failure, seizures, coma, and even death as well as tooth rot ... but probably didn't stop conception.

Tie On Condoms Must Have Been Real Love Killers ....

So back to condoms and diaphragms ..... where strangely, one of the oldest condoms ever found was dated to 1642, and were animal-tissue sheaths like sausage casings, and where found at Dudley Castle in England. Lemons were used in the 1700's as a reasonably effective birth control method. The shape suggested a diaphragm and the acid in the citrus could kill the sperm, but as lemon juice is acid it would also damage vaginal tissue. Eeek

And in modern times, apart from women jumping up and down (yes, they were still doing it), Coca-Cola douches became a contraceptive tradition in some areas during the 1950s and 1960s, presumably when other birth control methods were hard to come by. Old Cola worked (allegedly), while New Coke didn't ..... but both left a nice taste.

So what about the male contraceptive?

Well it never really occurred:

In South Asia and Southeast Asia, the seeds of the papaya could actually serve as an effective male contraceptive. Papaya seeds, taken daily, could cut a man’s sperm count to zero, and was safe for long-term use. Best of all, the sterility was reversible: if the man stopped taking the seeds, his sperm count would return to normal.

But the idea has never caught on in the rest of the world .... for some reason, men are not fond of the idea ....