From Aspirin to Viagra by Vladimir Marko

From Aspirin to Viagra by Vladimir Marko

Author:Vladimir Marko
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030442866
Publisher: Springer International Publishing


Story 6.4: The Catholic gynecologist and his futile hope

Christianity has strictly banned all forms of contraception since its very beginnings. The words in the first chapter of the Book of Genesis, Be fruitful and multiply, inextricably associated the sex act with reproduction and continues to do so to this day. If anyone dared to disobey, they would be punished by God. A case in point is the story of Onan in the Old Testament, although it tends to be misquoted.

In order to fulfill his duty under religious law, following the death of his older brother Er, Onan was to marry the brother’s widow Tamar. He would only be a sort of stand-in, and any offspring would be officially deemed that of the older brother. In protest, whenever he had sex with Tamar, he “spilled his seed on the ground,” effectively using a form of contraception that would later become known as coitus interruptus. God found that to be a sin and slew him. References to the name Onan were, wrongly, often thought to be references to masturbation (onanisma).

The New Testament added the precept of virginity and the institution of marriage to the duty to procreate, and therefore a young woman could “be fruitful and multiply” only after receiving the sacrament of marriage. This also sealed her fate: to give birth to children and care for them. Any attempt at preventing this God-given duty was considered a sin and birth control did not make an appearance in the vocabulary of the Catholic Church until the first half of the 20th century.

While the teachings of the Catholic Church were clear about birth control and remained unchanged for centuries, the life circumstances of the ordinary faithful often forced them to circumvent those teachings. At first, the main reason was health problems in women. Following numerous pregnancies, women became so worn out and weakened that they were at risk of death with another pregnancy. Social reasons came later as couples began to realize that the more children they had, the less likely it was that they would be able to care for them responsibly.

The most commonly used method of birth control in history is coitus interruptus, as mentioned in the story of Onan. The main disadvantage is that it requires the partner to take responsibility. Women had been using pessaries and diaphragms made of various materials long before they were officially invented by Wilhelm Peter Johann Mensinga of Flensburg in the 1870s. These had the advantage that family planning was controlled by the woman, so that she did not have to rely on her not-always-reliable male partner.

The oldest known condoms were discovered in the excavation of an ancient toilet at Dudley Castle near Birmingham, England. They can be dated quite precisely, since the castle burned down in 1646. In the 1950s, a box of condoms manufactured in 1780–1810 was discovered; the size of those condoms was interesting, at 7.5 inches long with a diameter of 2.4 inches. In comparison, today’s European Union standards are over three quarters of an inch shorter.



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