HISTORY OF FERTILITY AWARENESS - From the Venus of Willendorf to the 19th century

   Now let us travel back in time a bit and see what different cultures thought about reproduction in different eras, when the great discoveries in human anatomy started and whether these newly revealed facts verified or refuted the theories of our ancestors.
   Some parts of this article are to be treated with a sufficient amount of irony. 😉

   When there were only handfuls of people on earth living far away from each other then reproduction was the biggest mystery. Archaeologists say that these people believed being overweight to be the primary sign of female fertility. Proof of this theory could be the statues of the Venus of Schelklingen from around 40,000-35,000 BC or the Venus of Willendorf from 24,000 BC. However, this is all we know about those times.

Venus of Schelklingen

Venus of Willendorf

   The earliest written sources on the topic of family planning are from the ancient Egypt. The KAHUN papyrus from 1900 BC describes methods to avoid or achieve fertilization, the EBERS papyrus from 1552 BC gives advises on pregnancy testing, breastfeeding and finding out the gender of the fetus. It also contains a practical solution for contraception: maintaining the natural acidity of the vagina by the use of tampons soaked in vinegar or lemon juice will kill the sperms.

KAHUN

EBERS

   In India, between 1000-500 BC, the Hindu medical training provided a detailed description about the optimal time for conception: within 12 days after the menstrual bleeding stopped; and choosing the gender of the baby: for a boy the sexual intercourse should be on the even days of the cycle (4th, 6th, 8th, 10th, 12th), for a girl on the odds (5th, 7th, 9th, 11th).
   In ancient Israel women were told to abstain from sex for 7 days after their periods, this way they would get pregnant immediately on the 8th day. The method could work for the majority of women but they did not realize that with short cycles it might just be the recipe of failure for some. To increase the time between two pregnancies they believed in excessive breastfeeding for 2-3 years. These practices can be found in the Jewish community even today.
   The Greeks and Romans did not add anything new to the discoveries discussed above, they even took a step backward. A school of philosophy attributed the Single Seed Theory to Aristotle (384-322 BC). The theory was that the child in the womb developed from the single seed of the man. Later Galen (129-216 AD), a physician to Roman emperors and gladiators, forwarded the Two Seed Theory on the simple observation that a child would look like the maternal side of the family.

Aristotle

   For centuries the general belief remained that menstruation was closely associated with ovulation and therefore being the most fertile time in the cycle. Mistakenly, the rest of the cycle was considered to be infertile. This theory persisted even into the 19th century.
   In the Renaissance started the great discoveries in human anatomy, mostly thanks to the lifelike artworks of Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael who conducted dissection on human bodies. The drawings of Leonardo da Vinci particularly reawakened the interest in the working of the body, leading to the discovery of circulation and the female reproductive organs (Fallopian tube: Fallopio - 1561; corpus luteum: Coiter - 1573 and de Graaf - 1672).

da Vinci - Dissection of a woman

   The next big step was the improvement of the microscope in 1677 (Leuwenhoek), there was no stopping from then on. In 1765 von Haller concluded that the ruptured follicle transforms into corpus luteum; in 1843 Barry mapped the passage of the sperm from the vagina to the Fallopian tubes; in 1897 Beard realized the importance of the corpus luteum during pregnancy and in 1928 the human ovum was first described by Allen.

   I will write about the 20th century and the development of the Fertility Awareness Method in a separate blog post. If you have not done it already, subscribe with your e-mail address to get notified about new posts. I have a lot more to tell you, so stay tuned! 😉