Volume 40, Number 19 · November 18, 1993
Old Wives' Tales
By W.V. Harris
Contraception and Abortion from the Ancient World to the Renaissance
by John M. Riddle
Harvard University Press, 245 pp., $39.95
Demography and Roman Society
by Tim G. Parkin
Johns Hopkins University Press, 225 pp., $29.95
For thousands of years human beings have been attempting to increase or decrease their fertility. Modern interest in this history, for reasons that are transparent, has tended to concentrate on ways of limiting fertility. Precise notions about how to do this are first recorded in an Egyptian document of about 1850 BC, the Kahun Medical Papyrus, which includes three prescriptions for vaginal suppositories with allegedly contraceptive properties. There is no reason to think that such prescriptions were then new.
Review, 3551 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |