Historic Methods of Contraception

The first hint on vaginal contraception can be found in 3,550-year-old Egyptian papyri (collected in Ebers Papyrus about Egyptian medical texts of 1550 BC [4]). Tampons from acacia leaves were soaked with honey and inserted into the vagina. Thereby contact of sperm with the cervical os was effectively prevented. 

Phny the Elder, Pedanius Dioskurides De materia medica, 77 AD) and a little later, the most important gynaecologist of ancient times, Soranus of Ephesus On Midwifery and the Diseases of Women, 100 AD), already wrote about contraception and abortion. Reference thereof can also be found in the thriving Arabic medicine of the 10th century, as, for example, in works by Muhammad ibn Zakariya Razi (Rhazes, Quintessence of Experience), Ah ibn al-Abbas al-Majusi (Haly Abbas, Royal Book) and Abu Ah al-Husain ibn Abdullah ibn Sina (Avicenna, Canon of Medicine). 

Adam Raciborski (1809-1871), a Polish physician in Paris, was the first to publish a statistical analysis on the periodicity of the menstrual cycle. Hermann Knaus (1929) and Kyusaku Ogino (1930) proved, independently of each other, that ovulation occurs 14 days prior to the next menstruation, on which the Knaus-Ogino calendar method of contraception is based. 

In the 1940s, at the Ortho research laboratories, the first spermicidal surfactants (octoxynol (Triton X-10(P) and nonoxynol-9 (Triton W )) were discovered and developed. Both of these substances became very quickly the leading spermicidal agents worldwide. Another product, a foaming tablet containing men-fegol from the Eisai company, followed in the late 1960s, but was introduced only in Europe. 

The most fundamental societal change remained however reserved to the discovery of the pill . In times of economic awakening, student upheaval, women s emancipation movement, hippie culture, liberalisation in the Roman Catholic Church (in the wake of the 2nd Vatican Council, 1962-1965) and sexual laxity, the first hormonal oral contraceptives came on the market. In 1964, 2% of the women of child-bearing age took ovulation inhibitors by 1968, this number had already increased to 12 %, and by 1986, to more than 35 %. Nowadays, the pill is ranked as one ofthe safest contraceptives. Not only the active ingredients were improved, but also their dosages and dosing schedules. Through the experience over the last 30 years with many millions of women on the pill , the associated risks and side-effects are now well-known. 

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