Vintage contraceptives
It didn't start with the pill.
Chris Wild
400 BCE-1965
Editor's note: Mashable does not recommend using outdated forms of birth control, like some of the methods featured in this article. Consult your doctor about effective birth control regimens.Contraception, birth control, family planning — it's nothing new.
Ancient Egyptians used a mixture acacia leaves, honey and lint as a block inside the vagina to keep out unwanted sperm. In Ancient Greece, so popular was the plant silphium (a.k.a. Laserwort) as a contraceptive that it became extinct in Greece. Some of the devices shown here are pessaries, which are tools for blocking the cervix. This type of tool is also an ancient method - some cultures have also used oiled paper shaped into a cone, or even half of a lemon.
Although it wasn’t until the 1900s that the condom was widely used, Italian adventurer Casanova writes of using a lambskin condom in the 1700s. In the Victorian period, promoting birth control or distributing literature was illegal. But in the 1920s, British activist Marie Stopes broke through this societal barrier, presenting birth control as a medical rather than moral function. Stopes opened a pioneering birth control clinic, which gave advice to mothers and, specifically, showed how to use a cervical cap. In 1937, an American survey showed overwhelming support — more than 71% — for contraception. Yet it remained illegal to advertise the growing number of clinics for birth control. By the late 1950s, chemical researchers had developed a potential contraceptive pill, and in 1960 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved its use. Still, it wasn’t until 1965 that contraceptive pills could be used by married women in every American state, and not by unmarried women in all states until 1972. Featured on the 1967 cover of TIME, the pill was a revolutionary moment in medicine and the growing women's liberation movement.
