Product Description

The question addressed in this book is: if women once had access to effective means of birth control, why was this knowledge lost to them in modern times? The author asks what women knew about regulating fertility with herbs, and shows how the new intellectual, religious and legal climate of the early modern period tended to cast suspicion on women who employed the "secret knowledge" to terminate or prevent pregnancy. Knowledge of the menstral-regulating qualities of rue, pennyroyal and other herbs was widespread through the centuries among herbalists, apothecaries, doctors, and laywomen themselves, even as theologians and legal scholars began advancing the idea that the foetus was fully human from the moment of conception.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #296823 in Books
• Published on: 1999-05-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Review
John Riddle has established his reputation as a leading expert on ancient Greek pharmacology. In an earlier study, "Contraception and Abortion from the Ancient World to the Renaissance", he argued that a much more reliable knowledge of oral contraceptives existed in the ancient and medieval worlds than had previously been thought. In this book, Riddle attempts a broader but partly overlapping study, a history of abortion and contraception in the Western tradition (Europe and the United States, with a glance at the Islamic World). More specifically, he challenges the common view that oral contraception was little practiced and largely ineffective until the 18th century...Riddle argues his case with learning and perspicacity. He draws widely on the specialist literature of a number of disciplines as he discusses, among other things, the theology of ensoulment of the fetus and the demographics of early modern Europe. -- Gary B. Ferngren "New England Journal of Medicine"

Customer Reviews

Enlightening, raises important questions
This book presents information that could turn out to be important for theories of demographic change.

If it is accurate that knowledge about methods of contraception and abortion are not a recent discovery but have been widespread among ancient peoples (which makes sense to me), some important questions arise:

(1) how do we explain the christian-european ignorance of, even rejection of contraception and abortion that was commonplace in the euro-american world until into the 60ies? When and how did this basic human knowledge about contraception and abortion practices disappear and how might this have contributed to the steep growth of the european population in early modern times? Riddle offers some interesting answers here: he interprets the witch trials of early modern times as a strategy against specialists in matters of contraception and abortion (many midwifes were labeled witches and burned).

(2) how do we explain the surprisingly high birth rates in many socalled "development countries" and especially in the islamic world that some american strategists see as one of the major background factors of terrorism ("youth bulge")'--- how is this correlated with the history of knowledge about contraception and abortion in these countries?