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Sunday 13 July 2014

Contraception

The first-known contraceptive was crocodile dung, used by Egyptians in 2000 BC.

Women in ancient China would swallow mercury heated in oil as a form of birth control.

The first contraceptive diaphragms, centuries ago, were citrus rinds such as half an orange rind.

Romans used a plant called Silphium as contraception. They had so much sex that they drove it into extinction.

The condom - made originally of linen - was invented in the early 1500's.

The combined oral contraceptive pill (COCP) was developed by a team headed by Carl Djerassi, a chemist, from 1951. It was given the proprietary name Enovid in 1956.

On May 9, 1960 the Food and Drug Administration approved the sale and use of Enovid  — the first mass pharmaceutical form of what is now simply known as "The Pill."


The Pill was the first drug used by "healthy" people to prevent something rather than by the sick to treat an ailment.

Though originally prescribed only for married women, The Pill was the chemical agent for making the sexual revolution possible. It made sex outside of marriage far easier to conceal, lowering the social cost of extramarital and premarital sex.

Only 400,000 women took the oral contraceptive in 1961. By 1965, the number was almost 4 million.

Pope Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical, Humanae Vitae reaffirmed the Catholic church’s historic denunciation of artificial birth control. Many Catholics were disappointed by this as it was felt that after the modernisation of the church in Vatican Two, the church would take heed of technological advances such as the pill and allow Catholics to practice contraception.

Before 1972 it was a felony for unmarried people to possess contraception such as birth control or condoms in the United States.

In France, the government announced in 2000 that all women could get the morning-after contraception pill for free in pharmacies.

In 2010, McDonald's accidentally handed out 5000 condoms instead of toys in Happy Meals.

Papaya is a natural male contraceptive for monkeys.

In 1960, the year The Pill was introduced, the North American birthrate was almost four children per family. Today it is below two.

The Pill also works on gorilla females. In fact, over 220 of the Zoos that are members of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums use birth control pills to help control gorilla breeding.

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