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

Eve’s Herbs is both a summary of and a sequel to Riddle’s earlier study, Contraception and Abortion from the Ancient World to the Renaissance (1992). As in the earlier volume, Riddle puts forward a large and, in many respects, radical thesis that chemical means of limiting fertility (by both contraceptives and abortifacients, though he gives the latter category far more attention here) have been known and used throughout Western history. Beginning with a riveting summary of the landmark Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision in 1973, Riddle moves back all the way to ancient Egyptian sources to find evidence that healers of the past were continually discovering the fertility-limiting properties of herbs. From this central assertion, he suggests that knowledge of these plants, and the later suppression of that knowledge by religious and legal forces (and even witchhunts), accounts for both the containment of population growth in premodern Europe and its manifold expansion in the modern period. This is a “big book” in the truest sense of the term, in that it offers interrelated causal explanations for the whole course of Western history.

Let me say at the outset that I find Riddle’s general argument about the potential of herbs to affect fertility plausible, if not yet fully conclusive. Critical to his thesis are modern chemical assays of various plant substances that show them to be effective on lower-order mammals in curtailing fertility. It remains to be seen whether these substances really have all the properties in humans accorded to them here. The amounts needed to produce effects are often huge: a dosage of 1.2 g/kg in a rat (the effective amount of rue extract) would mean that a 50 kg woman (about 110 pounds) would have to ingest 60 grams of the substance in order to achieve a similar effect. Still, research on phytoestrogens has confirmed plants’ powers to affect human hormonal physiology, and it is likely that Riddle’s work will bring more plant substances back into the modern pharmacopeia.

Some of my criticisms pertain to minor inaccuracies: foreign words are often misspelled, mistranslations are unnervingly common, items are omitted from the index, and so forth. My real concerns, however, lie in Riddle’s handling of the “big questions” of the history of gynecology and the social history of women. His thesis hinges on his belief that women understood the code that substances labeled “menstrual regulators” and “emmenagogues” were really contraceptives and abortifacients in disguise.” He ignores the fact that premodern theories of female physiology were premised on the belief that menstruation was a vital purgation. Waste matter from the entire female body built up over the course of the month, and if it was not purged regularly, it would cause disease. Moreover, there was a belief that conception was best accomplished in the period right after this purgation; the menstrual purgation was thus necessary for conception. As one of the so-called Trotula treatises explained in the twelfth century, menses were called “women’s flower,” because just as trees did not bear fruit until they flowered, neither did women. “The flowers” is found in almost all European vernacular languages as the common medieval term for menstrual blood. Thus, it is in no way surprising that the authentic writing of the female practitioner Trota should begin its section on emmenagogues with the explicit claim that these render the woman ready for conception: “Secundum Trotam ad menstrua provocanda, propter quorum retentiones mulier concipere non potest [(a remedy) according to Trota for provoking the menses, because of whose retention the woman is unable to conceive].” ¹ Also typical was the description in the Circa instans (the principal twelfth-century Salernitan herbal) of the properties of balm (Melissa officinalis L.): “it provokes the menses, cleans and comforts the womb, and aids in conception.” ² Riddle is nonplussed by the, to him, illogical references to emmenagogues as fertility enhancers (which...