Page:Contraception; 1st ed. (IA in.ernet.dli.2015.94163).pdf/275

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CHAPTER NINE

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

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