Health and Medicine
PUBLISHED
Birth control, contraception, family planning – whatever you call it, how long have people been coming up with ways to prevent (or strategically time) a pregnancy? The first oral contraceptive was approved in the US in 1960, but methods of contraception have been around much further back in history than that.
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One of the earliest mentions of birth control comes from the Bible – specifically, chapter 38, verse 9 of the Book of Genesis. In this chapter, we meet Onan, whose brother’s death had left him in an awkward position: he was obliged to marry his brother’s wife.
Trouble was, that also meant that any children they had wouldn’t actually be considered Onan’s – they’d be deemed his brother’s – and he’d be skipped over in the line of inheritance.
“[S]o whenever he slept with his brother’s wife, he spilled his semen on the ground to keep from providing offspring for his brother,” the verse reads. In other words, Onan was using the pullout method.
Also known as the withdrawal method, or if we’re going to be fancy about it, coitus interruptus, this approach to birth control involves removing the penis from the vagina before ejaculation in order to try and prevent pregnancy. It’s a method still used globally by an estimated 53 million women aged between 15 and 49.
However, as Onan might’ve found out if he didn’t get bumped off by God for using it, withdrawal is also not one of the most effective methods of birth control.
According to the World Health Organization, if done correctly every single time, then around one in 25 will get pregnant per year – but doing it perfectly every single time is easier said than done. As a result, it’s generally considered to be more like one in five people who use the withdrawal method will get pregnant each year.
Sperm killers
Nowadays, spermicides – substances that kill sperm, thereby acting as a form of birth control – can be found in all sorts of forms, including creams, gels, suppositories, and in condoms. However, their use might stretch back far beyond the modern age all the way to ancient Egypt.
The Ebers Papyrus, which dates back to around 1550 BCE, is believed to hold another of the oldest mentions of contraception, featuring a recipe for a pessary that we now know has ingredients with spermicidal properties.
In this text, it’s recommended that a wad of fabric be soaked in a mixture of honey and ground-up acacia, carob fruit, and dates, and then be placed into the vagina.
It turns out that whoever came up with this formula was on to something; research would later reveal that acacia spikes contain a gum that when fermented forms lactic acid, which is found in some modern spermicidal products. Similarly, a particular species of acacia, Acacia auriculiformis, has been found to contain compounds capable of immobilizing sperm.
Ancient Egyptians are also said to have used crocodile dung as a contraceptive agent – although we imagine a lack of pregnancy following its use might have had more to do with, y’know, poop being offputtingly stinky, rather than any spermicidal properties.
