When condoms began to somewhat resemble their modern form in the sixteenth century, it was a result of centuries of trial and error. Venereal diseases had plagued people since the time immemorial, and various barrier methods had been tried with limited efficacy. Gabriele Falloppio’s De Morbo Gallico recommended wrapping up in linen sheaths soaked in salt. Other reusable condoms were made from sheep intestines that could be washed between uses, but they were tied on with ribbons, so…silver linings?
As you can imagine, these weren’t particularly effective. Madame de Sévigné described condoms as “an armor against enjoyment and a spiderweb against danger.” If they did succeed in preventing the spread of venereal disease, we can only assume it was because they put people off the idea of sex altogether.
Note that as different types of condoms were being developed, it was with the aim of preventing venereal disease, not pregnancy. Why not?
Because there was already something else available.
By the sixteenth century, herbal contraception and abortifacients had been fairly common for at least two thousand years, and their use wasn’t that big of a deal. Emmenagogues—herbs that stimulate menstruation when delayed for any reason—were common medicine. Physicians and monks provided them when needed, often as cures for non-specific “stomach issues” that plagued women. Saint Hildegard von Bingen wrote of the medical uses of abortifacient plants in the twelfth century, but she wasn’t the first scholar to tackle the subject.
In the first century AD, Dioscorides of Anazarbus published a medical text that included a list of plants that acted as contraceptives or abortifacients alongside treatments for common problems. The list and its accompanying recipes proved so useful that the text in its entirety continued to be copied and consulted for centuries. Both Galen and Pliny the Elder wrote on methods of limiting family size, and in the second century AD, Soranus’s four-volume work on women’s ailments, Peri Gynaikeion Biblia Tetra, showed an advanced understanding of the difference between contraception and abortion.
But for many in later years, the distinction was unclear and largely unimportant. During the Middle Ages, there was some debate about when life truly began—“ensoulment” at birth rather than conception—so contraception and abortion before about three months were seen as essentially the same thing. As it was something women tended to deal with on their own, it didn’t really concern anyone apart from the women, their medical providers, and their confessors. [Read more about the medieval moral view of abortion here]
The study of common plants with abortifacient properties continued for centuries, but those involved with medicine weren’t the only people preserving that knowledge. Women shared that information with each other, passing it between generations one person at a time until a more efficient method of communication became available.
Contraception in Cookbooks
Knowledge of herbal abortifacients not only survived the Middle Ages, but it became more accessible as time went on. As books became more affordable to the general populace, what had mainly been shared between women and among physicians became available to anyone who could read. While family planning was still very much a private matter, coded recipes appeared in popular cookbooks.
Hannah Woolley was a kind of seventeenth century Martha Stewart, writing books on household management to support herself after her husband passed away in 1661. As a servant to a lady during her younger years, Woolley had picked up a number of recipes for food and home remedies as well as invaluable housekeeping tips. She became a household name after self-funding the publication of her first book in 1661, The Ladies Directory, followed by The Cook’s Guide shortly thereafter. Her books flew off the shelves and sold out of multiple printings.
Between the recipes for perfume and preserves, however, there was advice of a more sensitive nature. The Accomplish’d Lady’s Delight—published in twelve editions between 1675 and 1720—contained the following:
- To bring down the Flowers.
Take of Alligant, Muskadine, or Claret
a pint, burn it, and sweeten it well
with Sugar, put thereto two spoonfuls
of Sallet-Oyl; then take a good Bead of
Amber in powder in a spoon, with some
of the Wine after it: Take this Evening
By the seventeenth century, “bringing down the flowers” was a common euphemism for abortion, or stimulating menstruation that was unexpectedly late. That this recipe was included in the early modern version of The Joy of Cooking gives us some indication of how abortion was viewed in practice: it was a women’s issue best left to women. As before, a woman wasn’t really regarded as pregnant until “quickening,” or the first detectable signs of fetal movement around three-to-five months into a pregnancy. As such, stimulating menstruation early enough was a non-issue.
Though she was respected as an amateur physician, Woolley didn’t concoct this recipe herself; there were more than two hundred plants with known abortifacient properties available in Britain, and this was only one combination. Recipes to “draw down the flowers” or “procure the months” were included in many common books of recipes and herbal remedies, and the ingredients for them could be found growing outdoors or purchased from an apothecary.
Those without access to these cookbooks or household herbals had other ways of finding the same information. Women shared these recipes with each other verbally, and “cunning women” and midwives could also be consulted.
In the 1560s, Elizabeth Francis of Chelmsford was reported as having visited her “grandmother Eve” in Hatfield Peverel, who advised her what herbs to drink to terminate her pregnancy. Alice Butcher reported that similar potions could be obtained from the apothecary in Warrington in 1612. In nineteenth-century Cambridgeshire, it was “Granny” Grey of Littleport to ask for pills of hemlock, rue, and pennyroyal.
Interestingly enough, many abortifacient herbs were anti-estrogenic, which made them effective at preventing pregnancy as well as ending it. A relative of silphium, Queen Anne’s Lace (also known as Wild Carrot) was recorded as a contraceptive as far back as ancient Rome, when its properties were documented by Soranus. Historian John Riddle has reported that the seeds of this plant are a potent contraceptive if harvested in autumn and chewed immediately after sex. Modern clinical studies do support this; the seeds contain estrogen and act as a progesterone blocker, effectively preventing pregnancy in animals.
Additionally, artemisia and juniper were both known to inhibit fertility. There are more than two hundred types of artemisia, among them mugwort, tarragon, and wormwood, the key ingredient in absinthe. In the twelfth century, Trotula recommended artemisia as a “menstrual stimulator,” and in the thirteenth century, Arnald of Villanova advised taking it with capers. Like Queen Anne’s Lace, studies have confirmed that it works: artemisia inhibits estrogen production and can prevent ovulation much like pharmaceutical contraceptives.
Hannah Woolley loved it. Her books contain a number of wormwood recipes, including this one, which would have come out a lot like absinthe:
- To make Wormwood-Water
Take two Gallons of good Ale, a pound
of Anniseeds, half a pound of Licorise,
and beat them very fine; then take two
good handfuls of the Crops of Wormwood,
and put them into Ale, and let
them stand all Night, and let them stand
in a Limbeck with a moderate Fire.
Licorice is also known to be an effective emmenagogue; it has been used in Asian and Central American medicine for the same purpose. Likewise Artemisia, which is not without its side effects. Wormwood is known to cause hallucinations and changes in consciousness. Ingested in large quantities, it can lead to seizures and kidney failure.
Juniper, an ingredient in gin—enduringly popular since the Gin Craze of the eighteenth century—has been used as a contraceptive since Ancient Rome. Pliny the Elder recommended rubbing crushed juniper berries on the penis before sex to prevent conception. Its popularity continued throughout the Middle Ages; Arabic medical writers Rhazes, Serapion the Elder, and ibn Sina all listed it as an abortifacient, and this knowledge was made more readily available throughout Europe when Gerard of Cremona translated their works in the twelfth century. According to ibn Sina, juniper produced an effect similar to a natural miscarriage, so it could be used without detection.
Sit and Drink Pennyroyal Tea
Today most people probably know it from the Nirvana song, but pennyroyal tea has been used as an emmenagogue since antiquity. Aristophanes mentioned it in Lysistrata, and it appears in the Eleusinian Mysteries as kykeon, a ritual beverage drunk in the service of goddesses Demeter and Persephone. Pennyroyal is a fairly common variety of mint with a strong spearmint taste, and its abortifacient properties were known globally. One early depiction that leaves little to the imagination is this illustration of a midwife preparing pennyroyal tea for a pregnant woman in the thirteenth century (above). See that herb? That’s pennyroyal.
Clinical studies have proven its efficacy as an abortifacient, however, pennyroyal is extremely toxic, and it would have been very easy to overdose. Still, its potency and availability made it a very popular method of ending pregnancies.
Drinking pennyroyal tea for this purpose was so common by the early twentieth century that Dr. P.F. Braithwaite wrote a piece for the British Medical Journal in October of 1906 detailing one patient’s experience in hopes of dissuading people from trying it:
On August 5th at 8.15 p.m., I was sent for to see a young married woman who had suddenly been taken ill. It appeared that, having gone a week beyond her time for menstruating, she had taken some “pennyroyal tea,” an infusion she had made herself from threepennyworth of pennyroyal, with threepennyworth of rum added to it. This had no effect on her in any way, so, on the evening I saw her she had taken threepennyworth of “essence of pennyroyal,” procured at the nearest herbalist’s, again adding threepennyworth of rum. (…) Ten minutes after swallowing this essence she began to feel strange and started to go upstairs; feeling worse, however, she sat on the bottom step and began to retch. (…) She then became unconscious.
Dr. Braithwaite was able to revive the woman and induced vomiting with a mixture of mustard and hot water just as she was experience confusion and numbness in her extremities. Fortunately, she survived:
In view of the widespread habit, amongst women of the working classes, of taking preparations of pennyroyal, and their firm belief in the harmlessness of it, the case seemed to me worth recording, as serious illness was indubitably caused by it, even though recovery was never, perhaps, in doubt.
Pennyroyal is a kind of mint that is not particularly difficult to grow. It could be purchased around the world, and as Braithwaite mentions here, its concentrated essence was available without prescription at any herbalist’s shop. No longer just a tea, by the early twentieth century, it was an active ingredient in abortifacient pills around the world, as well as a potent insecticide.
Abortion first became a criminal offence in Britain in 1803 under the Malicious Stabbings or Shooting Act, more commonly known as Lord Ellenborough’s Act. Though the act was mainly concerned with those assaulted by weapons, it officially changed when life was thought to begin—it was no longer at quickening, but conception. This was well before the Church, which not officially rule that life began at conception until 1869. Early stage abortion went from common practice to serious felony overnight. Organizing or abetting an abortion became a capital offense, so doctors who would have previously been sympathetic distanced themselves for their own protection. Once again, women were on their own.
As print media became increasingly accessible, advertisements for various mysterious-sounding women’s remedies began to appear in papers with increasing frequency. While once women might have had to visit the village “wise women” for assistance in identifying and preparing herbs, now those same concoctions were available in pill form through the mail. One popular brand was Widow Welch’s Pills. It would have contained a herbal abortifacient like pennyroyal, and it was sold as a cure for “female obstruction” into the twentieth century.
Similar to Widow Welch’s were “French Periodical Pills,” “Farrer’s Catholic Pills,” and “Madame Drunette’s Lunar Pills,” also advertised in newspapers and women’s magazines. As in previous centuries, they were often advertised as menstrual regulators. In 1868, a medical journal writer replied to ads offering relief to women “temporarily indisposed” and discovered that more than half of them were discreetly advertising abortion. Beecham’s Pills (right) were marketed as a laxative from 1842, and the company spent nearly £100,000 on advertising by 1880, boasting that they sold six million boxes annually. Over-the-counter pills with the same active ingredients were available in Britain, Australia, Europe, and North America.
While abortions laws remained restrictive in Britain throughout the nineteenth century, they were not punished so severely in the United States. If caught, terminating a pregnancy within the first few months was at most a misdemeanor. Over-the-counter menstrual regulators like Widow Welch’s did very well in the States, and during the 1860s, abortion services were also available in bigger cities, including New York, New Orleans, Cincinnati, Louisville, Chicago, Cleveland, and Indianapolis. Throughout the mid-nineteenth century, it is estimated that a shocking 25% of all pregnancies in the United States ended in abortion.
Herbal contraception certainly had its drawbacks. For one thing, it wasn’t always effective. For another, it could prove to be fatal. Many herbs succeeded in inducing miscarriage because they were essentially poison taken in low doses. Taking them wouldn’t have been as simple or painless as taking a prescription contraceptive; it’s no coincidence that many early recipes to stimulate menstruation included opium or alcohol for the pain. That people continued to use them for thousands of years despite the risk of kidney failure, damage to the nervous system, cardiac arrest, or death only shows that despite legislation and social stigma, women have always found ways to control their own reproductive destinies.
Abstinence is not a workable solution, and it never has been. If anyone tries to tell you that people in the past simply did not have sex unless it was for procreation and that contraception of any kind didn’t exist, remember Hannah Woolley. Imagine her books selling out, printing after printing until they reached kitchens across Britain and beyond, providing the recipes many women needed but no one ever talked about. Remember that sourcing pennyroyal was as easy as going to the market. Think of Widow Welch’s and the dozens of other over-the-counter menstrual regulators that sold by the millions well into the twentieth century.
People have always liked sex and, for good or ill, found ways to prevent unwanted pregnancy. Sex in history isn’t always as it appears, and even the most devout, respected, well-behaved figures had their secrets.
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