Once a taboo topic, contraceptives have shaped history and the lives of women. The Dittrick Medical History Center at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio recognized the importance of contraceptives when it accepted the donation of the Percy Skuy History of Contraception Collection, which illustrates the earliest forms of prevention, for a permanent display in its Dittrick Museum.
Earliest Recorded Female Contraception
Records show Egyptian women used vaginal douches and pessaries designed to kill sperm as early as 1850 B.C. Silphion, an herbal oral contraceptive, was used in 600 B.C. Greek rhetorician Aristotle advocated the use of spermicidal oils and ointments during his lifetime (384--322 B.C). Abstinence as a means of controlling conception was referred to in The Bible (book of Genesis) and by Roman historian Pliny, who lived from 23--79 A.D.
Douches
Medical doctor Charles Knowlton popularized syringe douching in 1832. Knowlton's douching mixtures, which included vinegar, zinc sulfite and liquid chloride, found wide use in the United States This method continued to be the main form of birth control until the introduction of the birth-control pill in the 1960s.
Condoms
French diarist Casanova recorded the use of naturally-made condoms using animal intestines as early as the 1750s. Charles Goodyear, working in 1839, invented a flexible condom that used vulcanized rubber.
Legal Restrictions
The Comstock Act, passed in the United States on March 2, 1873, made it illegal to send "lewd" or "obscene" materials, including birth-control devices, through the mail. The basic premise of the law remained in effect through the 1950s. Thirty states passed additional laws prohibiting the sale and advertising of birth control. In the 1950s. Connecticut outlawed the use of any contraceptive device and Massachusetts prosecuted distributors of contraceptive literature under felony laws.
Margaret Sanger
Margaret Sanger was a pivotal figure in the contraceptive movement. After working as a nurse in the New York City slums in 1912, she coined the term "birth control" in an article for "The Woman Rebel" in 1914 that resulted in her prosecution under the Comstock Act. Sanger opened birth-control clinics that challenged such laws, and her efforts are responsible for the 1918 court decision allowing therapeutic birth control and the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in "U.S. vs. One Package" (1936), which allowed the importation of birth-control devices. The American Medical Association's recognition of such devices as therapeutic treatment (also in 1936) led to widespread use of the diaphragm in the U.S. beginning in the 1940s.
Hormone Treatments
A contraceptive pill was the first major birth-control breakthrough of the modern period, landing in "Time" magazine's list of the century's top inventions. The pill used medical research done in the 1920s in which female hormones were regulated to prevent pregnancy. The Searle Corporation trademarked the birth-control pill Enovid and sold it in 1960 by medical prescription only. Modifications to the pill included the introduction of phase pills in the 1980s, hormone injections in the 1980s and hormone patches marketed in early 2000.
