John Riddle uncovers the obscure history of contraception and
abortifacients from ancient Egypt to the seventeenth century with
forays into Victorian England--a topic that until now has evaded
the pens of able historians.
Riddle's thesis is, quite simply, that the ancient world did
indeed possess effective (and safe) contraceptives and
abortifacients. The author maintains that this rich body of
knowledge about fertility control--widely held in the ancient
world--was gradually lost over the course of the Middle Ages,
becoming nearly extinct by the early modern period. The reasons for
this he suggests, stemmed from changes in the organization of
medicine. As university medical training became increasingly
important, physicians' ties with folk traditions were broken. The
study of birth control methods was just not part of the
curriculum.
In an especially telling passage, Riddle reveals how
Renaissance humanists were ill equipped to provide accurate
translations of ancient texts concerning abortifacients due to
their limited experience with women's ailments. Much of the
knowledge about contraception belonged to an oral culture--a
distinctively female-centered culture. From ancient times until the
seventeenth century, women held a monopoly on birthing and the
treatment of related matters; information passed from midwife to
mother, from mother to daughter. Riddle reflects on the difficulty
of finding traces of oral culture and the fact that the little
existing evidence is drawn from male writers who knew that culture
only from a distance. Nevertheless, through extraordinary scholarly
sleuthing, the author pieces together the clues and evaluates the
scientific merit of theseancient remedies in language that is
easily understood by the general reader. His findings will be
useful to anyone interested in learning whether it was possible for
premodern people to regulate their reproduction without resorting
to the extremities of dangerous surgical abortions, the killing of
infants, or the denial of biological urges.
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