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Earliest contraceptives
Fragments of Egyptian papyri, found at Kahun in El Faiyum in 1889, are the oldest medical
literature that has
come down to us from antiquity. They reveal that upper class Egyptian women of the Twelfth
Dynasty, about
1850 B.C., used crocodile dung as a pessary, irrigated the vagina with honey and natron
(native sesquicarbonate
of soda), and inserted a gum-like substance in the vagina. Though elephant's dung was later
substituted for that
of the crocodile, a similar prescription was used in various places for some three thousand
years. It is likely that
the contraceptive measures had some effect. Honey and gum would clog the motile sperm; and
crocodile's dung,
slightly alkaline, would not be much different from a spermicide carried in a sponge. The Ebers
papyrus (about
1550 B.C.) contained a prescription for the use of lint tampons moistened with juice from
fermented tips of
acacia shrubs, i.e. lactic acid.