North Carolina State University
News Services
Campus Box 7504
Raleigh, NC 27695 (919) 515-3470
Media Contacts:
Dr. John Riddle, 919/515-3307 or [email protected]
Pam Smith, News Services, 919/515-3470 or [email protected]
July 16, 1997
ëEve's Herbs' Explores Loss of Early Birth Control Methods
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
The desire for effective family planning is as old as Eve, herself, says Dr. John Riddle, professor and head of the history department at North Carolina State University. From the earliest times, women sipped herbal teas and potions made from rue, pennyroyal or Queen Anne's lace to prevent or terminate pregnancies.
In his new book, Eve's Herbs: A History of Contraception and Abortion in the West (Harvard University Press), Riddle explores whether knowledge of such garden-variety methods of fertility control have been lost to modern day women, and if so, why. He tracks historical evidence from the Renaissance to Roe vs. Wade. Riddle's book is expected to be reviewed in a forthcoming issue of JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Eve's Herbs picks up where Riddle's previous book, Contraception and Abortion From the Ancient World to the Renaissance, left off. This critically acclaimed work demonstrated that premodern populations had viable, safe and effective means of regulating reproductive rates by use of oral contraceptives. In that period, there was widespread knowledge of effective plants, their extracts, harvest times and processes, and correct doses, Riddle says.
Riddle found no such openness about contraceptives in historical documents from modern times, he said. The knowledge survived in "coded form" for a variety of reasons. The science of medicine became more institutionalized during the Renaissance and herbal remedies were relegated to folk history by the male-dominated medical profession. For fear of being singled out as witches, women did not write formulas down. In more recent years, Riddle says, women were concerned that use of herbal abortifacients or contraceptives would bring legal or religious prosecution.
So-called women's secret knowledge, passed on by word of mouth, persisted outside the medical realm. By the 18th and 19th centuries, "snake oil" doctors peddled morning-after herbal compounds disguised as "Lydia Pinkton's Vegetable Compound" or "Lunar Pills" to "restore" menstrual regularity.
Riddle's research took him to London to pore over Common Law records for clues to how the knowledge became suppressed. He found that in the Middle Ages, it was generally viewed that women should not end a pregnancy in late term as much because of risk as religious or legal factors. Courts of that time said that a person did not have "ensoulment" until birth.
Riddle said a legal turning point came in the early 17th century when Robert Cooke, one of the foremost authors on Common Law, cited abortion as a felony. "Either he made an inexplicable error, or dishonesty prompted his misrepresentation of Common Law," Riddle said.
During the 19th century, most Western countries, including the United States, had outlawed abortion and the prescription of substances to induce abortions. In 1869, Pope Pius IX outlawed abortion among Catholics, declaring that the human soul was born at conception.
Studying Supreme Court records of the controversial Roe vs. Wade decision, Riddle concluded that the law clerks had done their homework. "This was a major decision drawn on a well-researched, valid understanding of the law on birth control. The Court said it would not deal with the philosophy of when life begins, but the historical rights of women," he said.
Medical bias or legal and religious pressures aside, Riddle noted, folk medicine persists in scattered pockets. In out-of-the-way valleys in the Appalachian Mountains, women are apt to know the secret recipes calling for Queen Anne's lace (the seeds of which block the production of progesterone needed to establish a pregnancy), or pennyroyal (which contains a chemical capable of terminating a pregnancy).
Riddle mused that, while the medical profession shuns traditional herbal medicine, it freely "borrows" from it for many successful commercial products. The birth control pill is a chemical synthesis of a common, tropical root plant; the controversial morning-after pill has the same pharmacological action as ancient, herbal remedies.
Riddle, who teaches medieval history at NC State, said he has followed his own intellectual curiosity to pursue the history of contraception and abortion for more than a decade. The author of seven books and numerous articles, his research has been published internationally by print and electronic media. Riddle is immediate past president of the American Institute for the History of Pharmacy.
--smith--
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