Contraception/Chapter 9

No evidence still extant indicates to us when the very primitive, nay even the prehistoric woman became sufficiently conscious of her own person and powers to desire, or to achieve, any measure of control of conception. That definite contraceptive means (however imperfect and unreliable) were employed in the prehistoric past is probable: for to-day a number of extremely primitive races possess their own type of crude knowledge on this subject, and so make it evident that earlier races of the same grade probably did also.

In primitive communities, however, the personal needs of the woman and the health-giving effects of true contraception are less likely to have been realized than the simple desire to reduce the number of unnecessary babies. Hence abortion and infanticide are the early and more barbarous equivalents of contraception, but contraception as distinct from either of these existed long centuries ​ago, and persisted among tribes still at the developmental stage of primitive savages.

That abortion was not only known but recognized and definitely practised by many primitive races is well authenticated. An interesting account of early Greece and her changes in population is to be found in Clinton's great work.^[1] In this he examined and controverted Malthus' work, and, with many details, showed that the changes in the populations in ancient Greece supported the view that the actual population depends more upon the moral condition of the people than on wars, &c., and that wars may even tend to a total increase of numbers. Myers^[2] had also an article on the subject and notes that Hesiod recommended that the cultivator of the soil should not bring up more than one son at home. The Greek midwives were expected to have a competent knowledge of abortion as part of their equipment.

The primitive and barbarous form of dealing with the population question was, ​obviously, the destruction of the procreated embryo or the infant after birth. A race still in this stage of development is seen in the inhabitants of Futuna, where according to Smith^[3] "It was not even felt as a shame for a mother to kill her children. Some there are who have destroyed as many as six. Ordinarily the child was crushed before birth by pressing the body with heavy stones, at other times they were stifled at birth, or were buried alive in the sand."

Many of the advocates of birth control nowadays are little equipped with historically accurate knowledge, hence it has become the custom to speak as though contraception were a very modern invention and but recently spread over the world. The source of this misconception will be dealt with in a later chapter. Meanwhile, as there appears to exist no memoir on the early history of the limitation of populations I have collected a few references to the subject, which, like fragmentary glimpses of crags and hill tops show that a landscape lies behind the fog-cloud of the valley of time.

We may legitimately argue that if ​exceedingly primitive still-living savage races have native customs of a given type, it is at least highly probable that our prehistoric ancestors when at a similar savage grade of culture had similar or comparable customs. This makes the details of various operations used by savage races of greater than purely local interest. A brief account of some of these will be found in Bartels, Chapter CXXV.^[4]

A number of authors also speak of an inland race of primitive Australians who employed the "Mika" operation, which consists of the slitting, with a stone knife, of the urethra by the lower side of the penis. This operation is paralleled by a much more elaborate sterilization of girls by the tearing off of the cervix and the slitting of the vagina down to the anus. A full account of this horrible operation is given by Dr. Garson.^[5] The interest of the procedure of the natives lies in the fact that the Mika operations were done not only deliberately to prevent conception, but were done on eugenic grounds, for the operations on the ​males were done only on those who, by the age of 18 or thereabouts, proved themselves to be indolent and the least useful members of the tribe. According to Dr. Garson the Mika operations on the male take three forms:—

1. A small incision in the urethra in front of the scrotum, so that the semen ejaculates externally.
2. Division of the urethra in front of the scrotum and again just below the glans penis, then by cutting longitudinally along each side of the urethra, it is dissected out.
3. A piece of wood is placed along the dorsum of the penis, drawing the skin tight. A flint knife is then inserted into the orifice and the urethra laid open to the scrotum.

The savages thus preventing the possibility of conception by the racially inferior members of their tribes, being themselves in the stone tool phase, have presumably the mental development of the Stone Age and it seems quite legitimate to argue that there is at least the probability therefore that our ancestors of the Stone Age also practised sterilizations and methods for the control of conception from a racial or eugenic point of view.

Among the primitive peoples of Africa, many races are acquainted with definite ​means of preventing conception, and, as Carr-Saunders^[6] says of various tribes, "almost without exception the average number of children is everywhere recorded as small." Carr-Saunders does not specify the methods employed, but cites a number of references to original accounts by explorers and others. Similar evidence of some contraceptive knowledge exists for widely scattered primitive races all over the world. As Carr-Saunders has so recently brought together most of the scattered references to savage races, and their various contraceptive measures, there is no need for me to go into the subject in detail. It is sufficient to remind the reader of my present book that primitive and savage peoples are generally much less ignorant about these matters than are the modern slum-dwelling "civilized" women of our cities to-day.

Some "Savages," for instance, are so expert in control, that as among the Kingsmill Islanders women are reported to have generally only two children and "never more than three."

That Westermarck in his famous and ​exhaustive book on marriage^[7] does not refer at all to contraception, and that there is no entry of the subject in his index, and only one brief note on abortion, appears to me to be so remarkable as to be totally inexplicable!

Turning from savages to historical documents and publications, one of the earliest sources of really explicit and profound sex instruction is the Kama Sutra. Based on Sanskrit texts of the sixth century, the ancient Sanskrit books of instruction in love, in spite of all crudities (some of which appear in our eyes absurdities), are nevertheless interspersed with profound and still most useful wisdom. The Ananga-Ranga^[8] is the most complete I have seen. The need for contraception was recognized by these early authors, and there is evidence that the women of the East long ago were themselves aware of the value and wished to benefit from the use of contraceptives. The methods of course are not scientific to the extent of those available to-day, but like much early information, they are based on ​a perception of the requirements of the case. Some of the advice given is as follows:—

"It may be held desirable to limit the members of the family, in which case the following prescriptions will be found useful:—

1. "The woman who will eat every day for a fortnight forty mashas of molasses (Jugri) which is three years old, will remain barren for the rest of her life."
2. "Let a woman drink for three days after the fourth (purification day) a decoction of Chitraka (Ceylon lead-wort Plumbago zeylonica) boiled with rice water."
3. "The woman who will drink for three days after the fourth a decoction of the Kallambha-plant (Nauclea cadamba or parvi-folia) and the feet of jungle-flies, will never have children."
4. "Levigate twenty mashas of marking nut (Semecarpus anacardium), boil with Dhunor water in which rice has been washed, and drink for seven days, during which the monthly ailments last; the result will be lifelong barrenness."

One is surprised, not that these prescriptions may have failed but that the ancient orient should have considered this subject from so modern a point of view: the ancient art of Love in the East did not ​treat the woman as a subservient and negligible factor but paid great regard to her requirements, as is also seen by the elaborate advice given to the man about his duty to arouse her properly and give her full satisfaction.

The Hindu theologians, however, pushed their logical premises to such an extreme that it was considered a crime for a girl to menstruate before she was married (see p. 235 ante) and the child marriages and general social conditions became extremely unfavourable to infant life, particularly that of female infants. Abortion became rife, and we read in Webb^[9] "Perhaps no country on earth has immolated so many new-born infants as India, nor has any race of mankind more generally practised the abominable art of murdering children when yet in the womb of the mother."

Abortion was procured by inserting a stick into the womb, also by internal concoctions of various sorts such as asafœtida, ginger, garlic, long pepper, and various native plants. For instance, the "expressed ​juice of the Boori GooaPan, 3ss repeated every 3rd Hour."

Webb, in the same work records cases of native Indian women who took various native prescriptions to prevent conception, which succeeded, but about which Webb remarks that, "if they do not act as charms, it is difficult to say how they do act." One of these prescriptions, for instance, is to swallow red broad cloth (Sooltani Bonat), and it is claimed to effect the desired object.

In more recent times Wilkins^[10] confirms the fact of the continued prevalence of abortion, and estimates that there were "a thousand a month in Calcutta alone."

Other oriental countries also were (and are) notorious for the number of abortions performed and Dr. Collineau^[11] records that in China public announcements, with the addresses of abortionists and those supplying pills to procure abortion, were quite freely published. He noted also that since the establishment of steamship communication with prostitute houses, female infanticide has been reduced because "Les filles sont un revenu; on les conserve."

​I find no explicit information concerning contraception in Mohammedan countries. The Koran, however, does not condemn abortion although it explicitly forbids infanticide. And Rique^[12] reports that the Arabs punctured the amniotic membranes when abortion was desired. This custom probably was an ancient one with them.

Havelock Ellis^[13] points out that "Even in the Islamic world of the Arabian Nights we find that high praise is accorded to the 'virtue and courage' of the woman who, having been ravished in her sleep, exposed, and abandoned on the highway, the infant that was the fruit of this involuntary union, 'not wishing,' she said, 'to take the responsibility before Allah of a child that had been born without my consent.' The approval with which this story is narrated clearly shows that to the public of Islam it seemed entirely just and humane that a woman should not have a child, except by her own deliberate will." (Mardrus, "Les Milles Nuits," vol. xvi, p. 158.")

​The early history of the subject in Europe is even more obscure. What happened in early Christian times I do not know. By the time of the Decameron, however, we are given some indication that contraception was available and utilized by some members of the population, although probably not by those who would have been most justified in its use.

A book of exceptional interest and profundity is "Les Maîtres d'Amour," an Arabic manual of the sixteenth century which I only know- through the French translation, and which is well deserving of study even by modern sexologists. It contains profound observations of physiological and psychological matters which I regret I have only recently read, as I should have benefited by their persual before writing "Married Love" as this work supplements and confirms several views which there I maintained rather tentatively. This book, in the sixteenth century, gives advice in connection with contraception and is, so far as I am aware, the first widely published and available information on what may be described as modern chemical means of contraception, including the use of alum, which is of course, still one of the most ​often recommended substances for vaginal douching.

So early as 1623 a very great book, of three large volumes, was published in Latin, which dealt in detail with varieties of impotence and sterility in and out of marriage.^[14]

I have not yet succeeded in discovering an English book or pamphlet in the sixteen hundreds, though I feel sure that such existed. If it did not, there must have been a considerable knowledge in circulation, probably derived from the frequent traffic to and from the continent, because in 1695 a whole book was written to condemn those who had small families.^[15] The author then addressed his dedication to a friend who had "a fair number of children, fourteen" . . . and praising him condemns those who "will desire Issue for the Continuing of their Names; but they will prescribe their Number." He quotes the arguments used by the persons who desire small families, and these arguments ring with the very note of to-day! And he is scornful of those who "nowadays are ​much wiser or much worse than in earlier Generations they were; who are afraid of what they so much wished for; who look upon the Fruitfulness of wives to be less eligible than their Barrenness; and had rather their Families should be none than large."

The following year Venette used a curious theological argument against the possibility of contraception when discussing "Si les charmes peuvent rendre un Homme impuissant et une Femme sterile."^[16] He said "L'enfant qui se-forme dans les flancs de sa mere ne s'y forme que par un exprès commandement de Dieu. Le Démon n'a nul pouvoir d'empêcher la génération . . . & plustot, si le Prince des puissances de l'air, pour me Servir de l'expression de Saint Paul, exerce son pouvoir sur les incrédules, et sur les rebelles, ce n'est point par fort, mais par l'impie credulité d'une femme . . ."

A contraceptive measure, still greatly in vogue, came into use about this time, and sheaths, made of fine linen, appear to have been used in Italy so early as the middle of the sixteenth century, see Ellis,^[17] and these ​were steadily improved and made of other materials including isinglass and the cæcum of the lamb. Sheaths appear to have been invented to reduce the chance of disease, see Falloppio "De præseruatione à carie Gallica."^[18]

And the year following Albertus Magnus in his great work^[19] included mention of contraceptive measures, as he did also in his De Mirabile Mundi a few years later.

Following on these earlier works are a number of tracts and books re-hashing the information given in the Sanscrit and Arabic sources and more or less widely spreading the ideas contained therein. How widely such information was available just before the Puritan ascendancy in England, I have not been able to discover. The fact that at present the Church of Rome condemns contraception and is so opposed to the spread of sex knowledge, is of course, no indication that in the sixteenth century or earlier times it took this line. Indeed it looks as though it were otherwise: for instance the Public Records of Geneva for ​the year 1527 contain some interesting entries showing the hypocrisy of the pretended sanctity of the Priests—July 12, 1527, "Many citizens complain of the priests of St. Magdalen's who keep a bawdyhouse where there are many bawds. Ordered, that the bawds shall be banished, the lewd women compelled to live in the place assigned to them, and that the said priests shall be severely censured."^[20]

The English brothels also were in charge of the Clergy at one time. Interesting accounts of this are to be found in Kitchener,^[20] and the "Encyclopædia Britannica," article "Prostitution."

Theilhaber mentions^[21] that Arabian doctors knew the protective pessary, and special suppositories impregnated with various chemicals, but unfortunately he does not give any exact reference to the source of his information. I have seen it often stated in reference books and elsewhere that the ancient medical practitioners of Greece, Rome and Arabia derived much of their knowledge from Hindu sources, and were acquainted with the contraceptive ​effect of grease placed in the vagina. They were also expert in abortion (see also p. 243) and this perhaps inhibited any desire for contraception.

A medical correspondent tells me that Chinese women still trust the very primitive method of drinking cold water directly after coitus, and it is reasonable to suppose that, before the blight of modern "civilized" ignorance spread, this knowledge would be widely distributed.

At present there is a tendency (see p. 48) to use the word "onanism" (see also p. 69) to denote all kinds of contraceptive measures, but in earlier days it was used to denote masturbation. This act was used as a birth control measure in marriage, and concerning it there exists a curious literature in the seventeen hundreds, of which only one or two textbooks will be mentioned. In 1723 the following interesting paragraph appeared Speaking of masturbation—"This practice in a Marry'd State (as some of Those whose Letters he produces, who refrained from their Wives, for fear of multiplying Children, and yet practised Masturbation) with a Child-bearing Woman, is labouring indeed at the Destruction of our Kind, and striking at the Creation it self: It is, in some measure, the same ​Wickedness, as tho' he should tear the Fœtus out of its Mother's Womb, and kill it: For altho' it be not the destroying of a Real Being, yet it is preventing of a Possible and Probable Being, and that produced in a lawful and commendable Way; its the basest and most presumptuous Wickedness, scarce to be named among the Gentiles."^[22]

Another interesting volume on the same theme by Нume^[23] contains observations which really include many of the essential ideas of the hormone theory of the sex organs, although they are of course expressed in a simple way and in unscientific language.

It appears to me that the very terrifying warnings against "onanism" translated h(illegible text)ne Latin into French by Tissot^[24] may still be traced as influences colouring the popular ideas on the "sinfulness" of birth ​control owing to the confusion created by the differing uses of the word "Onanism."

This brings us to within a few years of the time of Malthus. Now the present generation has so often had dinned in its ears the claims of Malthus (and the totally distinct but generally associated claims of the Neo-Malthusians) that the fact of these early contraceptive practices is generally forgotten. More than that: Malthus' first edition was published in 1798 (and incidentally I should mention that this first edition is a very different thing indeed from his second edition) while almost anybody who talks about Malthus to-day reads the second or a later edition. In his first edition he re-stated the widespread idea that the world would long ago have been completely populated if it had not been for the population-reducing factors,—disease, epidemics, wars and misery. In his first edition, he offered no solution of this problem and no suggestions to relieve the situation. When emboldened to do so by public opinion, which had been roused to great condemnation of his callous presentation, he introduced into the later edition the idea of late marriage as a birth control measure designed to keep the population within bounds, but he did not advocate any contraceptive means ​though I have evidence that he knew of some methods of contraception. It must not be forgotten that he was still alive when Francis Place took up the subject of practical methods of contraception (see p. 265) and it is certainly not true to say, as does Adelyne More^[25] in her otherwise admirable pamphlet, that "Malthus wrote in an age which knew of no 'preventive,' as opposed to 'positive' checks . . . except either late marriage or the use of abortifacients." He personally corresponded with Francis Place and could have easily modified his later editions had he so desired. (See also p. 268.)

V. Robinson, M.D. in his little book "Pioneers of Birth Control" said:^[26] "Destiny concocted a greater irony when she made Thomas Robert Malthus the unwilling father of the birth control movement. This clergyman was a timid bird in the sociological aviary, and he turned in despair from the daring eagles he hatched. Malthus was not a Malthusian" (p. 16) "with clarity he saw the evils of an exces​sive and uncontrolled birth-rate, but as a therapeutist he was a clergyman. For a serious disease he proposed an impossible remedy."

Not only was the advice of Malthus wholly inadequate, his general theory of population will not bear the searchlight of modern scientific investigation, and his views are superseded, although undocumented persons still continue to speak and write of him as though he had laid down immutable laws.

Carr-Saunders in his learned and enlightened study of populations devotes much consideration to the more pregnant ideas of the development of optimum populations, and says^[27] (p. 201) "This idea of an optimum density of population is wholly different to that put forward by Malthus, To him the problem was one of the relative increase of population and of food; with us it is one of the density of population and of the productiveness of industry. To Malthus the position was much the same in all ages." And again (p. 476) "The errors underlying the wholly different exposition given by Malthus have been indicated; for him there was no such thing as over-population. In his view population had at any one time increased up to the ​possible limit and was in process of being checked. In the modern view numbers may approximate to the desirable level, may not reach it, or they may exceed it."

Malthus created a great stir in his own time and is still almost universally referred to as the original authority and the discoverer of the "Law of Population." But even this is not so, and his main themes were dealt with in a very modern spirit long before he wrote.

As Carr-Saunders^[27] has so recently gone into this history in detail, readers should turn to his book, in which references will be found to Malthus' predecessors of early date, including Botero who wrote in 1596 and Sir M. Hale who in 1667 largely forestalled whatever is still true in Malthus' work.