{"id":17902,"date":"2019-12-05T11:00:38","date_gmt":"2019-12-05T16:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/?p=17902"},"modified":"2021-07-23T13:21:30","modified_gmt":"2021-07-23T17:21:30","slug":"contraceptive-knowledge-in-the-mid-19th-century-united-states","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/2019\/12\/05\/contraceptive-knowledge-in-the-mid-19th-century-united-states\/","title":{"rendered":"Contraceptive Knowledge in the Mid-19th-Century United States"},"content":{"rendered":"

Circulating Now welcomes guest blogger Donna J. Drucker<\/a>, MLS, PhD, Senior Advisor, English as the Language of Instruction at Technische Universit\u00e4t Darmstadt, Germany. Here, Dr. Drucker explores the changing availability of knowledge about contraception.
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Pennyroyal plant, 2011
Courtesy Gardenology.org<\/em><\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What do pennyroyal<\/a>, fish skins, horse riding, and ergot of rye have in common? They are all contraceptive methods that have been used for centuries. In preliterate societies, information on regulating pregnancy was likely passed down orally from one generation of women to the next as they helped each other with pregnancies, births, and child spacing. In the mid-nineteenth-century US, however, more and more women were literate and information was more securely captured in print. Examining three mid-nineteenth century medical guides, available online and searchable in the NLM Digital Collections, shows the range of information available to those who could access and read books.<\/p>\n

One starting point for English-language lay knowledge about sex and reproduction in print is the publication of the anonymous and explicit<\/a> Aristotle\u2019s Problems<\/em> in 1595. Aristotle\u2019s reputation as a source of sexual expertise was perpetuated in Aristotle\u2019s Masterpiece<\/em><\/a>, first published in 1684. However, a review of US antebellum contraceptive advice can start with Charles Knowlton\u2019s Fruits of Philosophy<\/em><\/a>, 1832 (1st edition). Knowlton<\/a> was the first native-born American physician to publish specific instructions for preventing pregnancy. He recommended that women insert a small sponge tied with a string \u00a0into their vaginas during intercourse and use a douche afterward to wash away the sperm. The douche should be a \u201csolution of sulphate of zinc, of alum, pear-ash, or any salt that acts chemically on the semen.\u201d If these products were unavailable, he recommended douching with plain water. Knowlton served time in jail for obscenity, but that did not stop him and his successors from continuing to publish contraceptive information.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
Aristotle’s Master-Piece<\/em>, 1846
National Library of Medicine #8709661<\/em><\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Contraceptive information was circulated in subsequent editions of Aristotle’s Masterpiece<\/em> and The Fruits of Philosophy,<\/em> along with similar titles. Both A.M. Mauriceau\u2019s The Married Woman\u2019s Private Medical Companion<\/em><\/a>, 1847 and J. Soule\u2019s Science of Reproduction and Reproductive Control<\/em><\/a>, 1856 reiterated and expanded on Knowlton\u2019s advice. \u00a0According to the historian Janet Farrell Brodie, A.M. Mauriceau was a pseudonym for Joseph F. Trow, the brother of Ann Trow Lohman, who sold contraceptives and provided abortions in New York City under the alias \u201cMadame Restell\u201d from the 1840s through the 1870s. The Married Woman\u2019s Medical Companion<\/em> provided advice under the auspices of increasing Madam Restell\u2019s business. J. Soule was probably the name that Rochester, New York-based physician Asa Soule used for his publications.<\/p>\n

Mauriceau advocated teas with pennyroyal, motherwort, thyme, aloes, and tansy to bring about menstruation. His book also promoted the sale of condoms along with a French spermicide called \u201cM. Desomeaux\u2019s Preventive to Conception\u201d (142). Soule listed withdrawal, sponges, and douching as options, along with a condom, which he referred to as \u201ca covering used by the male called a baudruche,<\/em> known as the French secret\u201d (64). Condoms were then made of animal intestine, fish skin, or vulcanized rubber and were usually reused multiple times. Soule also put forward the idea of expelling semen through \u201cstirring about immediately after [sexual] connection, or by dancing, or any vigorous exercise,\u201d including \u201criding on horseback or over a rough road\u201d (ibid.).<\/p>\n