Hard Cover. Awesome book. Well documented. John has access to ancient documents that we could only dream about, or aren't even aware of.... he has ferreted out clues from the past, found indisputable documentation of plants being used effectively by ancient people for contraception and abortion, and has backed what the ancients knew with modern scientific documentation. The research that John Riddle does for us is invaluable. What a real treasure, there's no other book like it out there. I am thoroughly impressed, though I wish he would include what little he has found in the way of recipes. Very educational.

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Product Description

In Contraception and Abortion from the Ancient World to the Renaissance, John Riddle showed, through extraordinary scholarly sleuthing, that women from ancient Egyptian times to the fifteenth century had relied on an extensive pharmacopoeia of herbal abortifacients and contraceptives to regulate fertility. In Eve's Herbs, Riddle explores a new question: If women once had access to effective means of birth control, why was this knowledge lost to them in modern times?

Beginning with the testimony of a young woman brought before the Inquisition in France in 1320, Riddle asks what women knew about regulating fertility with herbs and shows how the new intellectual, religious, and legal climate of the early modern period tended to cast suspicion on women who employed "secret knowledge" to terminate or prevent pregnancy. Knowledge of the menstrual-regulating qualities of rue, pennyroyal, and other herbs was widespread through succeeding centuries among herbalists, apothecaries, doctors, and laywomen themselves, even as theologians and legal scholars began advancing the idea that the fetus was fully human from the moment of conception.

Drawing on previously unavailable material, Riddle reaches a startling conclusion: while it did not persist in a form that was available to most women, ancient knowledge about herbs was not lost in modern times but survived in coded form. Persecuted as "witchcraft" in centuries past and prosecuted as a crime in our own time, the control of fertility by "Eve's herbs" has been practiced by Western women since ancient times.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1564980 in Books
• Published on: 1997-06-30
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 352 pages

From Library Journal
Even in ancient times, people limited the size of their families. Since the major responsibilities of pregnancy, birth, and child rearing fell on women, they found methods for controlling fertility and aborting unwanted children, and they have passed down this knowledge as an oral tradition that survives worldwide. Using early manuscripts of medical and botanical texts and the proceedings of court cases, historian Riddle examines the use of plants as contraceptives, offering a fascinating view of the early knowledge of reproduction and attempts to regulate it. As formal medical training evolved and the Roman Catholic Church gained power, these preparations were forbidden, and women offering or using them were tried as witches. The information remained available in disguised form, and, in many parts of the world, Queen Anne's Lace, Pennyroyal, and other botanicals are still used to "regulate menses." More scholarly than Shirley Green's The Curious History of Contraception (LJ 8/72), this work is recommended for academic and large public libraries.?Barbara M. Bibel, Oakland P.L., Cal.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Card catalog description
Eve's Herbs explores a new question: If women once had access to effective means of birth control, why was this knowledge lost to them in modern times? Beginning with the testimony of a young woman brought before the Inquisition in France in 1320, Riddle asks what women knew about regulating fertility with herbs and shows how the new intellectual, religious, and legal climate of the early modern period tended to cast suspicion on women who employed "secret knowledge" to terminate or prevent pregnancy. Knowledge of the menstrual-regulating qualities of rue, pennyroyal, and other herbs was widespread through succeeding centuries among herbalists, apothecaries, doctors, and laywomen themselves, even as theologians and legal scholars began advancing the idea that the fetus was fully human from the moment of conception. Drawing on previously unavailable material, Riddle reaches a startling conclusion: while it did not persist in a form that was available to most women, ancient knowledge about herbs was not lost in modern times but survived in coded form. Persecuted as "witchcraft" in centuries past and prosecuted as a crime in our own time, the control of fertility by "Eve's herbs" has been practiced by women since ancient times.

From the Back Cover
Eve's Herbs is a highly informative presentation of the history of the use of plant products, such as ergot, as abortion agents.-Thomas Szasz, Washington Post

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Customer Reviews

It's good, but not...
If you are looking for do-it-yourself abortion information like I was, this is not a good book for that. It is a history book. It's good, but not an abortionary (abortion dictionary).

A work of history which also excels as an herbal
As a person who enjoys the study of social history (how people lived) and herbal medicine, this book exceeded my expectations on both counts.

Riddle is an historian, so the scholarship in the book is historical scholarship. He moves deftly between conflicting theories of demographics and actual family sizes, at home with his contemporaries and able to argue his somewhat novel opinion on a level playing field. Not surprisingly, historians tend to go along with modern medical thought that there were no effective systems of personal or professional health care prior to our own allopathic tradition in the past few centuries. Herbalists, homeopaths and the like are still fighting for legitimacy against exactly this mindset.

What surprised and delighted me was the thoroughness of Riddle's information on the herbs in question. It must be noted that he does NOT provide recipes for readers to use at home. He isn't playing (herbal) doctor. Regardless, a person with some experience in herbalism or access to alternate texts can easily take the list of herbs from this book and find appropriate dosage and other how to information from that other source--including the important caveat that herbs are not always safe and shouldn't be taken without professional advice or lots of research. Riddle's emphasis is on pointing out which plants have been indicated, by whom in the ancient world, and what science has (or has not) done to test for actual efficacy.

One interesting side note for readers who allow for the possible effectiveness of today's most revolutionary complementary medicine modalities is Riddle's reporting of the fact that, historically, chants (magic) were often listed together with the herbs (medicine) in any given herbal recipe. Riddle is careful and respectful of the potential for narrow-mindedness when he admits that, to our Western minds, there can be no believing in the usefulness of the magic side of the equation, but he makes no disparaging remarks and he allows for future scientific work to prove said "magic" effective. Of course, to a modern practitioner of Reiki or any other mental/spiritual healing system, it is certainly possible to suppose the intent of the healer and/or patient was a necessary or beneficent part of the ancient cures.

I expected to enjoy this book's subject matter, but I was actually delighted by how well Mr. Riddle covered both aspects of the topic, and even more so by the easy readability of his style. Any person who enjoys reading well-written history for pleasure will find this a work worth spending some time with.

awesome
The best book out there thus far on herbal contraception and abortion.