Claudius F. Mayer: From Plato to Pope Paul / Orvostörténeti Közlemények – Supplementum 17. (Budapest, 1989)

2. Coitus interruptus has a very ancient history among both uncivilized and civilized peoples, and it was practised for various egotistic and genetic reasons. 3. Mechanical and other contraception. The wish to prevent births goes back several thousand years.

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1 A wall picture in a cave at Combarelles is supposed to show a man from the Stone Age who is covering his membrum virile with some kind of mechanical contraption.

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2 Native tribes used medicated pessaries, sticky substances applied to the genitals for the prevention of conception. Primitive women in Sumatra are today still using pessaries made from local plants of high tannic acid contents.

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3 Potions of certain herbs and leaves, fumes of specific roots were also believed by many primitive races (Indians, Africans, Oceanians) to prevent fertilization, although such methods proved really rather ineffective. Native women of the Sahara also frequently indulged in magic medical practices (cabbalistic incantations, special amulets).

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4 4. Urethral surgery. A mixture of eugenics and contraception was reported from Australia where an inland race practiced the Mica or Koolpi ritual operation, and artificial hypospadiasis resulting in seminal ejaculation to the ground. The operation allegedly dates back to the Stone Age, and only those 18-year old adolescents who where indolent and physically weak were chosen for the operation.

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5 5. Induced abortion

, either as an egotistic or as a group policy, has been an universal phenomenon in savage life. It is one of the earliest efforts of man in an immediate and brutal way to ward off the burden of children.

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6 In spite of taboos, laws, and later even death penalties, induced abortion remained a characteristic of mankind. Its motives were always the same (poverty, illness, advenced age, extreme youth, too many children, disgrace, fear of discovery, etc.). Its primitive methods were thrust of pointed objects into the uterus, hot coal applied to the body, jumping from high places, vile potions and purgatives. Judging from its frequency among primitive races, induced abortion must have been also common in the Stone Age. North and South American Indians, Congo tribes, Kafirs, Madagascans, natives of the Gilbert Islands, of Samoa, Fiji, of the New Hebrides are well acquainted with all methods of miscarrige.

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7 Induced abortion has been also notices among Eskimos.

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8 6. Infanticide

, and infant cannibalism reminds us of the habit of carnivorous animals which devour their brood as soon as they are born

—a from of self-limitation of population.

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9 If animals give birth to forms which look strange to them, the mother devours the fetus at once. DARWIN

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0 could not imagine that "our early semi-human progenitors would have practiced infanticide or polyandry

; for the instincts of the lower animals are never so perverted as to lead them regularly to destroy their own offspring

". But, neolithic graves in England have contents which serve as evidence of infanticide practiced in England.

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1 The killing of deformed children was common, and indeed the practice of infanticide has been almost universal; therefore, it can be supposed that during former time it prevailed much more extensively. Although the destruction of abnormities had no importance on population size, it was of great eugenic importance for population quality.

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2 Sometimes, e.g., among the 7