Author's note--Please do not attempt to practice any of the late 1800s birth control methods listed in this lesson other than abstinence. Should you need further information about birth control, please refer to the addresses listed towards the end of this lesson. These sites will provide you with up to date information about available birth control.
Outside the boundaries of a morals discussion, please recognize that unprotected sex in this day in age is reckless and life threatening. Procreation and the prevention thereof is no joking matter. If you are not yet sexually active, think long and hard before you take the plunge. If you are sexually active and do not want to become pregnant; use up-to-date birth control methods and play it safe and remain disease, free. This information provided in this lesson is available anywhere on the Internet and in most research books and many periodicals. The Internet sites listed are not parent locked sites. Please be responsible and mature when reading and incorporating the facts from this lesson, thank you.
Last warning--Note to readers this section includes discussion of birth control methods of the 1800s
People have been using birth control for thousands of years. John M. Riddle, a Professor of History at North Carolina State University has found that even the Ancient Greeks had resources to prevent pregnancies. Linen condoms, dried fish powder, and sea sponges may not have had the efficacy rates of today's birth control devices, but they had their uses at the time. That being said, all methods listed below save abstinence have fallen out of use over the last hundred years. The description of the methods should be illustrative as to why these methods are no longer in use. Some of them were ineffective at best; some of them could be downright deadly.
Many of these items probably worked to some degree or another, but the side effects could vary from the mildly uncomfortable to deadly. Some, such as the cotton soaked with lemon, work as a spermacide, changing the pH level of the vagina to make it a more hostile environment for sperm.
Some of the Birth Control Methods of the late 1800s included
1) Abstinence
2) Withdrawal
3) Intercourse during menstruation and a few days after only
4) The first time (an obvious fallacy)
5) Standing up immediately after sex
6) Douching after sex with vinegar, or lemon juice, or whiskey or beer in an attempt to alter the pH of the vagina.
7) Praying
8) A sea sponge soaked in vinegar
9) Cotton soaked in lemon
10) Dried fish pounded to a powder (also mixed with lemon) and used vaginally
11) Doses of mercury, and various herbs and chemicals (the blend and characterization of the plants and the dangers of abusing or misusing them stops this author from listing these in detail)
12) Native Americans in the prairies often used dried; ground up cow or buffalo dung mixed with honey and placed it inside the vagina as a form of birth control. One can only imagine how it worked, possibly by changing pH levels and as a result acting as a spermacide, or possibly by causing an infection that would cause a miscarriage. This was a disgusting practice not popular with non-natives but it was extremely effective for those who used it.
Fear not, better resources are available today!
Here are two pages to turn to for more information on birth control practices and information.
http://www.plannedparenthood.org/bc/
Midwifery was the first medical specialty established when US medical schools originated. Harvard, established in 1782, was one of the first medical schools in the United States. There were few requirements of medical students until after the Civil War. Before then students attended lectures for which they purchased tickets and often no proof of passing grades at other institutions was required (this was the case until the late 1860s at Harvard). Frankly, in the 1800s, medicine was neither a rich nor a highly respected profession.
To increase their status and income, physicians tried to become more scientific. In doing so, they rejected female midwives as being untrained and scientific. Although a medical school education did not necessarily give physicians much expertise, midwifery was attacked, and male midwives became known as obstetricians. By the mid-1800s, most middle-class women gave birth at home attended by a male obstetrician. In large cities, eventually the process was transferred from the home to the hospital.
In 1847, a physician administered chloroform to a woman in labor. His horrified colleagues feared that the anesthesia would stop the contractions. However, the labor was normal, even though the woman was unconscious. Now women had the possibility of giving birth without something beyond the normal threshold of pain. Women began to ask for anesthetics to relieve pain which caused an outcry from the religious community saying that birthing without pain was blasphemy for Christian women. Somehow, through the centuries birthing pains were identified as a like punishment to women in retribution for Eve's punishment for tempting Adam and leading him astray. However, in 1853 when Queen Victoria delivered her eighth child under chloroform, religious opposition discreetly disappeared.
With the use of painkillers for childbirth, a new attitude developed toward women and their relationship to pain. The Victorian culture encouraged women to be more sensitive to pain and to openly express their aches and illnesses. Thus pain was subjectively perceived as being worse than before, and women were seen as no longer being capable of enduring it. To meet increasing demands for painless childbirth, birthing moved from the more natural, female-centered process in the home to one dominated by males, requiring medical skill, and centered in the hospital.
Ironically, the understanding provided to women through the practice of midwifery was all but lost in most communities until the late 1960s. Mennonites, Amish, and some ethnic groups continued to use midwifes but the mainstream American population eschewed informed knowledge about their bodies and the practice of gynecology and obstetrics grew to unimagined magnitude especially in the late 1940s and 1950s. What was lost in the process was the fact that more than 50% of women can safely deliver children through natural child birthing procedures.
A request for midwifes and for insurance coverage of such assistance has multiplied dramatically amongst American women in the last 10 years. Slowly, women are once again understanding that natural childbirth as administered and assisted by a midwife makes for healthier babies from the beginning and new mothers often find they suffer less pain and less after effects from this type of delivery than if they were to go the drugs and surgical route in child delivery. This issue continues to be a hotly debated and contested issue within the medical and healthcare community.
