There used to exist a silly schoolboy poem about what medieval knights used as contraception (socks, so went the rhyme), but have you ever wondered how birth control really did work way back when?
Thirteen-thousand-year-old cave paintings in France depict men using animal skins as condoms, while the Ancient Egyptians and, later, Romans used the likes of linen, animal bladders, animal intestines, and, so say some, the muscles of defeated combatants as sexual sheaths.
Ancient Egypt also provides us with some of the earliest writings on female contraception by way of near-4,000-year-old texts such as the Ebers and Kahun Gynecological Papyruses. Advice ranged from the bizarre – using a pessary made from crocodile dung – to the impressively prescient – lining the vagina with acacia gum, which does in fact serve as a scientifically-proven spermatocide. Similarly, Greek philosopher Aristotle suggested natural remedies such as cedar oil or frankincense be inserted instead.
Other ancient contraception cues stretch from the frustratingly literal – coitus interruptus (‘withdraw’), courtesy of the Book of Genesis – to the literally frustrating – abstain! – so argued Roman writer Pliny the Elder.
Things progressed little over the next several centuries, with Renaissance-era butchers fashioning condoms from the intestines of lambs and goats, and other ‘medics’ promoting chemical-soaked linen ones to protects against STDs. In the 17th century, halved lemons were even used as cervical caps.
For hundreds of years before the arrival of Europeans to Aotearoa, Māori women would boil up a broth using the leaves of the poroporo shrub as a means of birth control. Though, according to Te Ara, the efficacy of the method is not known, the shrubs were grown in Taranaki as late as the 1970s and ‘80s for their solasodine – a steroid used in contraceptives – until cheaper synthetic and natural alternatives were cultivated overseas.
The development of vulcanised rubber by US inventor Charles Goodyear (the same Goodyear after whom those famous tyres are named) led to the first mass-produced reusable rubber condoms in the 1860s, but they were so thick and uncomfortable that many claimed the animal entrails to offer greater pleasure. Latex condoms arrived in 1920, though the old rubber ones remained in use well into the 20th-century. (Astonishingly, in Ireland condoms were illegal until 1985, unless prescribed by doctor.)
A government inquiry in 1937 discovered at least one-fifth of pregnancies ended with illegal abortions, with most of the women married with at least four children.
POWER TO THE (FEMALE) PEOPLE
According to Donna Drucker, author of The Classification of Sex: Alfred Kinsey and the Organization of Knowledge, the modern history of contraception began in 1882 in the Amsterdam clinic of Dr Aletta Jacobs – the first place in the world where a woman could get a diaphragm fitted without the need for anyone else’s approval. (Though invented in 1842, the diaphragm wouldn’t be widely available to women in the US until nearly a century later.)
The first birth control clinic opened in the UK in 1921, by 1930 there were five birth control societies advocating “children by choice, not chance”, and by 1939 there were 65. In Aotearoa New Zealand the Sex Hygiene and Birth Regulation Society was founded in 1936, becoming Family Planning three years later. A government inquiry in 1937 discovered at least one-fifth of pregnancies ended with illegal abortions, with most of the women married with at least four children.
Within five years of the approval of the birth control pill in the US in 1960, nearly half of married women were using it (it remained more difficult for single women to access it in many countries for many years), and within five years of its arrival in Aotearoa in 1961, according to Family Planning, “40 percent of married, fertile women” were on it. (In Japan, the pill wasn’t legalised until 1999.) By 1967, 12.5 million women around the world were taking the pill, leading to social – and economical – revolution as more were able to achieve higher education and pursue careers. This period also saw the arrival of the plastic, then, in the ‘70s, the copper, IUD, along with emergency contraception, or the morning after pill.
Though designed as a pregnancy-planning app, Natural Cycles – which uses the basal body temperature to predict ovulation and advises on peak fertility – was (controversially) approved as a contraception method by the European Union in 2017, and more recently in the US.
MANPOWER
In a bid to encourage more blokes to take greater responsibility around casual sex, a famous UK advertising campaign of the 1970s showed an arresting image of a pregnant man with the tagline, ‘Would you be more careful if it was you that got pregnant?’
Indeed, the male pill was first proposed way back in 1957, but with hormones triggering the constant creation of new sperm cells in fertile men, scientists have struggled to find a way of lowering hormone levels without reducing sex drive or causing erectile dysfunction (other clinical side effects have included testis shrinkage and weight gain). Recent studies have shown an alternative method of reducing the function of sperm – rather than supressing it altogether – to show potential.
Also being trialled is a hormone-based gel that massively reduces sperm production in the testicles while replacement testosterone in the gel maintains libido and performance. However, the gel, like the male pill, is many years from regulatory approval meaning if men want to take control of contraception their only options remain condoms, a vasectomy or, as the Bible advises coitus interruptus (but please don’t rely on that one).
The first birth control clinic opened in the UK in 1921, by 1930 there were five birth control societies advocating “children by choice, not chance”, and by 1939 there were 65. In Aotearoa New Zealand the Sex Hygiene and Birth Regulation Society was founded in 1936, becoming Family Planning three years later. A government inquiry in 1937 discovered at least one-fifth of pregnancies ended with illegal abortions, with most of the women married with at least four children.
Within five years of the approval of the birth control pill in the US in 1960, nearly half of married women were using it (it remained more difficult for single women to access it in many countries for many years), and within five years of its arrival in Aotearoa in 1961, according to Family Planning, “40 percent of married, fertile women” were on it. (In Japan, the pill wasn’t legalised until 1999.) By 1967, 12.5 million women around the world were taking the pill, leading to social – and economical – revolution as more were able to achieve higher education and pursue careers. This period also saw the arrival of the plastic, then, in the ‘70s, the copper, IUD, along with emergency contraception, or the morning after pill.
Though designed as a pregnancy-planning app, Natural Cycles – which uses the basal body temperature to predict ovulation and advises on peak fertility – was (controversially) approved as a contraception method by the European Union in 2017, and more recently in the US.
