Contraception in ancient Egypt
Within the Egyptian company, the family constitutes the true basic social cell, and its importance is confirmed by the innumerable representations of couples accompanied by their offspring; most famous is that of the Pharaon Akhénaton, its wife Néfertiti and their girls. The main role of the woman was that of wife and mother. However, the medical papyri prove that the contraception was practiced in old Egypt.
Reasons of the recourse to contraception
Certain reasons pushed a small minority of women to be resorted to contraceptive methods. Thus, the prostitutes were the most assiduous users of this type of medicine, a pregnancy being able to be an obstacle with their community activity. In the same way for the nonmarried girls, it could be a subject of scandalmongering, especially if they did not wish to marry the father of the child.
More medical reasons could also play, the childbirth always representing an important danger to the most fragile women and those of which the constitution (too narrow basin) or heredity let predict complications likely to be fatal. It also seems that the recourse to the contraceptive practices were recommended in the case of psychiatric problems.
Medicine
The medical papyri treating contraceptive processes testify not only to one effective empirical observation, but also to real pharmacological knowledge. The whole of the remedies suggested associates products of vegetable, mineral or animal origin, prescribed either by oral way, or more generally, in local application. Among the prescribed ingredients, some have real contraceptive virtues, as the Datte S which have recognized a spermicide effect, just like the gum of Acacia, the Miel or the Natron.
Example of contraceptive preparation
The Papyrus Ebers, in ordinance 783, prescribed:
Beginning from the preparations which must be prepared for the femmes.
Faire that a woman ceases being pregnant during one, two or three ans.
Extrait of acacia (nonripe fruit of acacia or part of the acacia), carob, dattes.
Ce will finely be crushed in a vase hnw of miel.
Un vaginal plug will be soaked and applied by it in its vagin.
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