Perhaps it should come as no surprise that the great 18th-century seducer Casanova also had a trick or two up his elegant sleeve when it came to contraception. One of his favorite methods required a half lemon, scooped of its pulp: The rind served as a cervical cap and the acidic juice as a potent spermicide.
The legendary lothario's obsession with prophylactics is not unique, judging from the assembled evidence at the History of Contraception Museum. Indeed, as long as humans have been enjoying sexual pleasure, they've been seeking ways to avoid its natural consequences. "What you realize is that every strategy has been tried before," says Percy Skuy, the founder of the museum and a past president of the pharmaceutical company Janssen-Ortho, which houses the collection at its Toronto headquarters. Surveying the more than 600 items on display, one must agree: The Pill may have hastened the sexual revolution, but oral contraceptives, sponges, cervical caps, and condoms were playing a role in sexual freedom hundreds of years earlier. The sheer ingenuity of some of the methods and devices, odd as they may seem, is staggering. "You cannot help but have tremendous respect for the creativity people have demonstrated," says Skuy.
Even more striking is the intuitive grasp of conception fundamentals that many of the earliest methods convey. Thousands of years before scientists identified spermatozoa under the microscope, women were relying on techniques that inhibited the passage of seminal fluids. Women along the Mediterranean inserted sea sponges rinsed in acidic lemon juice or vinegar before intercourse. In India and Egypt, they used vaginal suppositories of highly acidic crocodile or elephant dung. Egyptian women also ground acacia leaves with honey to make prophylactic pessaries; the plant ferments into lactic acid, a spermicide that is employed in some of today's contraceptive jellies.
There were plenty of misguided practices as well. Women in ancient India tried to ward off pregnancy with vaginal fumigation— a special kettle produced the supposedly protective steam. Chinese women, meanwhile, drank poisonous concoctions of lead and mercury. During the Middle Ages, when superstition replaced science, European women sported amulets fashioned from a weasel's testicles, mule earwax, or a bone taken from the right side of a black cat. If the latter charm failed to work its magic, "it was because the cat wasn't black enough," says Skuy.
Bloopers are not confined to the distant past, of course. Until recently, generations of women had depended on douching, which doctors now believe actually gives sperm a push upstream. Some women continue the practice, however, using water, soap, even cola. By any measure, though, the contraceptives of the modern era— the Pill, IUD, under-the-skin implant, and condoms— are far more reliable than the methods that came before. Even Casanova's lemon.
