Eve's Herbs: A History of Contraception and Abortion in the West

John M. Riddle

Harvard University Press, 1997 - History - 341 pages

In Contraception and Abortion from the Ancient World to the Renaissance, John Riddle showed, through extraordinary scholarly sleuthing, that women from ancient Egyptian times to the fifteenth century had relied on an extensive pharmacopoeia of herbal abortifacients and contraceptives to regulate fertility. In Eve's Herbs, Riddle explores a new question: If women once had access to effective means of birth control, why was this knowledge lost to them in modern times? Beginning with the testimony of a young woman brought before the Inquisition in France in 1320, Riddle asks what women knew about regulating fertility with herbs and shows how the new intellectual, religious, and legal climate of the early modern period tended to cast suspicion on women who employed "secret knowledge" to terminate or prevent pregnancy. Knowledge of the menstrual-regulating qualities of rue, pennyroyal, and other herbs was widespread through succeeding centuries among herbalists, apothecaries, doctors, and laywomen themselves, even as theologians and legal scholars began advancing the idea that the fetus was fully human from the moment of conception. Drawing on previously unavailable material, Riddle reaches a startling conclusion: while it did not persist in a form that was available to most women, ancient knowledge about herbs was not lost in modern times but survived in coded form. Persecuted as "witchcraft" in centuries past and prosecuted as a crime in our own time, the control of fertility by "Eve's herbs" has been practiced by Western women since ancient times.

What people are saying

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - ericaheinz - LibraryThing

Pretty good... lists all the DOZENS of herbs with contraceptive properties, and definitely makes you wonder why hormonal birth control is such a clusterfuck. The book is more history than science, however, too many reviews of ancient judicial systems for me.

Eve's herbs: a history of contraception and abortion in the West

User Review  - Not Available - Book Verdict

Even in ancient times, people limited the size of their families. Since the major responsibilities of pregnancy, birth, and child rearing fell on women, they found methods for controlling fertility ...

Contents

• A Womans Secret: 8
• The Herbs Known to the Ancients: 33
• Ancient and Medieval Beliefs: 62
• From Womancraft to Witchcraft 12001500: 89
• Witches and Apothecaries in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries: 124
• The Broken Chain of Knowledge: 165
• The Womb as Public Territory: 204
• Eves Herbs in Modern America: 226
• Epilogue: 255
• Notes: 259
• Index: 329

About the author

John M. Riddle is Chair of the History Department and Alumni Distinguished Professor, North Carolina State University.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Eve's Herbs: A History of Contraception and Abortion in the West; Religions of the World
• Author: John M. Riddle
• Edition: illustrated, reprint, revised
• Publisher: Harvard University Press, 1997
• ISBN: 0674270266, 9780674270268
• Length: 341 pages
• Subjects: History / World; Medical / Gynecology & Obstetrics; Medical / History; Social Science / Women's Studies