Text: Northern Autumn
Edited by Beiqiu
In the long history of human fertility, starting with fertility and the production of healthy children, it has slowly taken over the dominant position in society. Globally, the pace and pattern of change has been and will continue to be uneven, both between and within developed and developing countries. The pressures and motivations surrounding the times have also never been prevalent in any society, past or present.
The reproduction of certain groups is always more supported and encouraged than others. Everyone's goals and circumstances vary. It's not that there wasn't an interest in contraceptives and abortion before the 19th century, or that there aren't people desperately wanting children now. Still, the broad range of initiatives is evident.
It's not a shift from reactive to proactive, from light-hearted indiscretion to careful attention. Having a child and having a child must work consciously and strategically as much as not having children. Agency in the field of fertility, especially female agency, should not be confined to actions around contraception and abortion, but should be understood more holistically, as recent academic research on medicine and fertility in medieval Europe has highlighted.
Increasingly studies of East Asian historical demography find themselves occupying a space between Louis Henry's basic "natural" and "controlled" fertility regimes, a space characterized by deliberate family planning that likewise fails to meet the narrow demands of traditional models based on equalizations.
1. Birth control
Shortly after 100 AD, Solanus of Ephesus, a famous Roman physician, wrote his Gynecology, the only surviving specialized treatise from the early Roman Empire. Like other ambitious physicians, Solanus traveled from his birthplace of Ephesus in Asia to the imperial capital through medical school in Alexandria, and although he spent most of his career in Italy, he continued to write in his native language, Greek.
Greek remained the dominant language of academic medicine, and its works were addressed not only to other physicians, but also to the largely bilingual Roman elite. Both the rich and powerful in Rome wanted to have healthy children, and Solanus provided instructions on how to achieve this, and he made a number of suggestions by opposing and criticizing past medical authorities and current rivals.
He rejected the traditional Hippocrates' view that women's health depended on the times, and instead believed that women's physical health was undermined by "procreation." This production is necessary to ensure the "inheritance of living things", that is, the continuation of the species, but this task is more challenging than most doctors admit. It requires more attention to taking care of the female body itself to counteract the harm caused by childbirth.
As a result, Solanus' birth plan is complicated. It begins with female anatomy and then systematically examines all the fertility processes involved from menstruation to childbirth and newborn care. He argues that with regard to the fertility of the bride-to-be, "whether they are able to conceive or have the right physical form to give birth", is used to assess her suitability.
The aristocratic audience seems to have ignored this advice, and all evidence suggests that the Roman elite adhered to their traditional interests in terms of origin, money, and appearance. This is not to say that they are indifferent to fertility, but that specific marital decisions are often determined by specific contingencies, by the need for union of family alliances, and there is an opinion that women's fertility is to be proven, not speculated.
For example, in the chronicles of the Roman historian Tacitus, the only woman who possessed the virtue of "fecunditas" had already given birth to children. With conception completed or at least progressing smoothly, and then guidance is provided for the care of the pregnant woman, there are three stages.
The first phase is designed to protect the deposited seeds, the second is designed to alleviate the symptoms that come with it, such as those associated with kissa, and the last, as the lying down approaches, aims to perfect the embryo and prepare for the demands of childbirth.
Every aspect of a woman's life is regulated, from what she eats and drinks to how often she bathes; Her emotional and physical range is limited, and her thoughts and actions are regulated. Given the agenda so far, it is perhaps surprising that the first book of gynecology ends with a chapter on contraception and abortion. As mentioned earlier, Solanos also clearly points out the adverse effects of all these processes on women: menstruation, conception and pregnancy.
Fertility consumes resources, depletes vitality and leads to premature aging: "Like the earth, it is so tired by continuous fruit production that it cannot bear fruit every year".
Solanos has opened up a conceptual space where family restrictions can be talked about in pro-birth programs. There was a balance between the interests of women and the need for family continuity, and while the latter had priority, some allowance could be provided to the former without affecting the project as a whole.
2. Birth control pills and abortion pills
They also distinguish between contraceptives and abortion pills, between those that prevent conception and those that destroy what has already been conceived.
The latter are called "saboteurs" and the former are called "unborns". Solanus reported that the destruction of what was carried has been controversial, with some doctors opposing any such intervention, while others advocate a discriminatory approach.
The opposition called Hippocrates as a witness, saying that "I will not give any woman an abortion" and asserted that the art of medicine must preserve and preserve what nature produces. The proponents of the trial explained that they would not help a woman who, through adultery or vanity, wished to destroy her conception, but to prevent the danger of childbirth caused by a womb that was too small, or calluses or cracks in the mouth or any similar difficulties.
They said the same thing about contraceptives, and Solanus agreed. He firmly placed himself in the camp of those who are willing to prescribe both atokia and phthoria in the right case, preferring the first one, because prevention is safer than destruction.
Solanus's contraceptive prescription can be roughly divided into three types, the first focusing on the act itself. The "best time" for childbearing sex should be avoided, and the woman should move away when the man is about to ejaculate, or immediately afterwards get up and encourage the seed to leave her body by squatting, sneezing, or other movements.
The second involves applying it to the uterine ostium anteriorly. Substances such as old olive oil or wet cement of myrtle oil and white lead can be applied externally to help "non-conceived" or pessaries made up of items to close the uterus or heat and stimulate the uterus, preventing seeds from entering or retaining, inserted anteriorly and then removed, respectively.
Solanus offers several recipes, with pomegranate peel, rubber bile, and various minerals being the most popular ingredients. Finally, there is what can be called an oral contraceptive. Plant material, seeds and balms, which are ingested monthly with liquids. These things are both destructive and preventive, Solanus concluded, after all, stuffiness is a rather complex process, the end point is blurred, and they are harmful to the body.
Solanos' discussion of abortion follows a similar pattern. For thirty days after conception, do the opposite of what he suggests to protect the deposited seeds. Women should jump around, carry heavy loads, eat the wrong food, try to wash and bathe for a long time. The next phase of intervention involves bathing with more medicinal potency. For example, flaxseed, mallow, wormwood and rue plants are used in it - as well as plasters and enemas of similar composition.
Finally, women may bleed profusely, or resort to abortion pessary. However, avoid anything that is too powerful, as well as any physical removal with sharp objects, as it is dangerous to injure the surrounding area.
Several of the ingredients listed here have been identified as having fertility suppression effects in a range of ethnobotanical and laboratory studies. John Riddle was the first to link this evidence to ancient medical writings and argued very strongly that knowledge of effective contraceptives and abortion pills was widespread in ancient times.
Since then, his work has been subject to constant criticism: its direction, premise, methodology, and conclusions have all been questioned. For example, discovering modern species that ancient plant names may designate is far from easy, while experiments have shown that feeding rats large amounts of pomegranate peels reduces their fertility by almost 30 percent, which may not reveal its effects on human females.
Nonetheless, the possibility of efficacy must be allowed, as emerging global research on traditional herbal remedies has shown. This is a generalized efficacy, a meaningful effect, rather than the guaranteed success required by modern biomedicine, but it seems likely that some prescriptions from Soranus may reduce fertility to some extent.
What's more, Solanus explicitly locates his discussion of contraceptives and abortion in marriage in marriage. Traditionally, while formulations and substances may simply be labelled as "atokia" or even "phthoria", actual involvement in the prevention or destruction business is associated with prostitution, in terms of pharmacological background or medical materials.
Solanus himself referred to the case of the enslaved "entertainer" who had been expelled by Hippocratic from the "seed" she had kept after being expelled, and he wrote On the Nature of the Child. The philosopher-poet Lucretius, who wrote his Latin epic poem On the Nature of Things in the last decades of the Roman Republic, asserted that women themselves could "prevent or resist" conception, pulling apart and becoming lame when men reached orgasm.
This technique belongs to "prostitutes" who want to minimize the chances of pregnancy and maximize the happiness of their clients. It's not "our wives" business.
They are there to give birth to legitimate children, and their role is to produce legitimate male sexual pleasure, a legitimacy based on the separation of trade and procreation: it is not reproductive in itself and does not harm the domestic strategies of other men.
However, Solanus wants to give wives access to infertility and even abortion under the banner of pro-fertility.
3. Divorce and remarriage
In the Roman Empire, non-medical action options were available to those struggling to have children. One of these avenues does find physiological support that infertility may be relevant in the standard acknowledgment of ancient medical and philosophical discussions. The failure of the build may be caused by some kind of incongruity or incompatibility between the couple.
The deficiencies in this partnership are interpreted as a mismatch of the body or sexual rhythm, constitution or seed, but the suggested remedies remain the same. Switching partners may lead to better results. Most of these expressions are vague, but Lucretius explicitly recommends divorce and remarriage, and repeated remarriage without offspring if necessary.
He was referring to men and women in previously barren marriages who later found a spouse with whom they had sweet and filial children. When Lucretius wrote his didactic epic in the first century BC, divorce and remarriage were legally straightforward for both parties in Rome, especially if there were no surviving descendants.
There is some debate about whether it is appropriate to divorce a faithful and virtuous wife solely on the grounds of failed childbearing, at least if she does not agree, but it is entirely possible to do so, and not having children makes the logistics of separation easier.
This is just a variation of a key theme in Roman marriage – the main reason for divorce in the late Republic and early in the Empire was remarriage, for political, economic, or reproductive purposes, perhaps a combination of all of these.
If Solanus's glaring omission of the infertile relationship aspect is puzzling, it is easier to understand that he doesn't mention the non-doctors who provide fertility advice and assistance in the Roman world.
A series of texts from the imperial period indicate that dream interpreters, astrologers, and fortune tellers were often consulted about the birth of children, pregnancy, childbirth, and the prospects of newborns.
The record does not tell the story of this encounter from the client's point of view, but there are many literary allusions that hint at the widespread but problematic rise of private divination during the early imperial period.
It is not surprising that Solanos is silent about those who might be seen as his rivals in order to gain the attention and generosity of the elite. Much more can be said about these options, and the possibility of seeking help directly from the gods to have healthy children, but the focus here is only on returning to the pro-reproductive form of Roman society, from which this section begins with an outline of some of its peculiar origins and complexities.
The range of resources available to those pursuing their specific family strategies within this framework, legal, medical, cultural, and religious, is part of this picture. These resources certainly meet the requirements for actual purchase and impact on the generated projects involved, and while not all resources are available to those below the elite, many are available in at least some form. The greatest effectiveness still lies in infant contact and adult adoption, so the discussion now turns to these phenomena.
These broad family goals have been widely achieved, although keeping offspring healthy is an ongoing challenge, and some loss is almost inevitable for everyone. Be that as it may, in the Roman context, it is difficult not to see, as today, that the level of control is comparable to today in terms of the positive aspects of the equation, that is, in terms of having children.
While adult adoption certainly expands what may be considered a more traditional definition of fertility, the same is true of modern child adoption and various forms of surrogacy, all of which are clearly part of the current single system for producing and distributing offspring. It seems like a grave mistake not to take into account these different actions around procreation, both now and in the past.