Ladies and gents I'm about to make you love the 21st century so freaking hard
I did way back a video on birth control in the apocalypse (if you want to check
that out link in the description down below also card up here) and a couple
people requested that I cover the fantasy side of things so that's what
we're doing today and that involves taking a little look into historical
birth control methods which it turns out we're pretty freakin horrible so first
I'm gonna cover the historical and then I'm gonna cover some magical creative
options you can use. Now quick writing disclaimer you should keep your mention
of birth control pretty small. We like some explanation but you don't need to
get super specific. So here are the top 11 historical forms of birth control and
I'm going to count the list backwards cuz that's what we're doing now. so
historical birth control method number 11 (I don't have enough fingers) lead
mercury or other toxic things. It turns out this is actually extremely effective. Why? Cuz
you can't get pregnant if you're dead. Game of Thrones used tansy which is an
herb which used frequently or in high amounts would lead to your internal
organs literally rotting away and I don't think you want that for your
characters. Method number 10 (this one sounds really funny)
lemon diaphragm. surprisingly this actually kind of worked. Not well of
course cuz you're just chopping off the top of a lemon and just
shoving it up inside yourself. But it actually did work a little bit and
that's mainly just because lemon juice works as a spermicide because it's
highly acidic and I guess the top of the lemon could potentially keep a little
bit of the sperm out but given in current modern day we've kind of stopped
using diaphragms because even the plastic diaphragms are not very
effective I'm gonna go ahead and guess that a lemon diaphragm does not work
much better. Also that just sounds kind of uncomfortable. I'm pretty sure that
sticking lemon juice all up in your private parts
would not be a very fun time. Method number nine this one comes from 1800 BCE
in Egypt and this one is a lovely mix of crocodile dung and honey.
So it's also used in India except they use elephant dung cuz I guess they didn't
have enough crocodiles around and you can just substitute any kind of dung you
want I guess. It sounds really ridiculous but it actually worked
stupidly well. The concoction worked as a spermicide due to its acidic properties.
So it actually did prevent a lot of pregnancies but I don't recommend you
use this in your fantasy book because we can't really get behind our ship getting
it off what all we can think about is the horrible yeast infections that the
main character is gonna get from all that honey in her vagina. Also the
crocodile dung is a little bit gross. It's also worth mentioning that this
method seems to have cropped up all over the world all over history always with
honey but always with a different type of dung and although the crocodile
version worked in large part because of acidity a lot of the other versions
actually worked because it turns out when you get a horrible uterine
infection you generally have a septic abortion and you lose the child so
technically the other forms were effective but not in a very pretty way.
Method 9.5 I just realized this doesn't work very well when you're counting and
reversed because that is counting back the other direction rather than
downwards but we're gonna go with it and i'm calling this one crocodile dung 2.0
This less exciting method took honey and instead of mixing it with crocodile dung
mixed it with *tries and fails to pronounce the word Acacia* Acacia leaves or unripe fruit which
was then put on a cotton ball or lint and inserted into the vagina. This came
in Egypt in 1600 BCE so this was the evolved version of the plain crocodile
dung method and this worked because acacia gum ferments into lactic acid
which is a spermicide. Method number eight this is a Greek and Roman method
which involved mixing olive oider... olive oider... Why do I keep saying oider?
Olive oil, cedar resin, basam tree juice, and honey.
I don't know why honey was so commonly used in these birth controls but seems
to be a very common ingredient. This mixture was also sometimes mixed with
lead which again is very effective because it can cause death but even
without the lead it was said that this decreased the motility of sperm
giving the woman time to go rinse out all her lady bits. I'm not sure how
effective that actually was we don't have a lot of data but I'm gonna guess
not that great. Method number seven this was started by ancient Egyptians who
seemed to be involved in a lot of birth control methods and then later crops up
all over history in different forms this one is vaginal fumigation. Doesn't
that sound lovely? So a vaginal fumigation a woman would straddle hot
stones and drip an herb solution on them so that the steam could go up into their
vagina and supposedly prevent pregnancy sometimes they used a tube and later in
history people use things like steamed onions so they crouched over a pot of
boiling onions. Method number six dick squeezing yeah that was a thing. This
was sort of an early half-assed almost approximation to men getting sniped I
guess. The theory was that if you press hard enough on the vas deferens you
prevent anything from getting out and thus theoretically prevent pregnancy.
This was probably terribly useless at that point you could just pull out which
doesn't actually work .Method number five animal intestine or linen tied onto the
dick with a ribbon. The ribbon is a nice little touch and this was the ancients
equivalent of plastic wrap kept on with a rubber band. Laugh all you want but I
legit know a guy who tried this. Not with me, with someone else. But I had a
friend who tried this and it turns out it works 100% because the rubber band
cut off all the blood to his dick which then went numb which kind of ruins
the mood. I like to imagine that slapping on an animal intestine probably does the
same thing but this was actually one of the more innovative forms of birth
control that was used in history that's cuz they were actually quite a bit
effective not for preventing STDs as condoms do today because of what
molecules could and couldn't get through the barrier of the intestine but sperm
couldn't get through so it was at least useful for preventing pregnancy. Now
that's a sausage. Method number four this one is really fun I think we should
bring this one back. Method number four is sneezing. Yeah
that was one. Sneeze the sperm out. I don't think I need to go any further
into this because the Greek gynecologist (Serranos) who suggested this didn't feel
the need to explain it any further either he just told women to sneeze.
Sorry I messed that up he told women to hold their breath and
then sneeze. Method number three stepping over a Viper.
I don't think any women actually try this I like to imagine that they
realized that that was not a very useful form of birth control but this was
suggested by a Roman scholar by the name of Gaius secundus and was actually
written into a science book that he wrote. This scholar also had the very
strong belief that menstruating women killed bees. I don't know where that came
from but on the other hand getting bit by a
Viper would probably induce abortion so there's that but if that's the angle
you're going for I'm pretty sure drinking mercury would be easier than
going out into the forest and trying to find a Viper.
Method number two sticks and bones and no they were not used to break men's
stones though that would have also been an effective method of birth control.
These sticks and bones were instead used to shove up into the uterus to induce
abortion. Now as someone who knows from experience how much it hurts to get an
IUD inserted by a medical professional in the 21st century I'm not even gonna
go into details for this method. And last but not least historical birth control
method number one this one is my favorite and that is
weasel testicles. Women would tie weasel testicles around their neck or leg or
around a pretty little garter belt and this was probably about 60% effective
because about 60% of men would not touch a woman wearing a necklace of weasel
testicles and can you blame him? I wouldn't expose my testicles to a
confirmed testicle harvester. And then the one useful truly useful historical
method of birth control which doesn't get a number in this list because I
didn't add a number in the script and so it's just off here on its own but it
deserves to be on its own because it's the only one that was truly good and
this is Silphium which was a greek form of birth control. This worked both
abortion and prevention either as juice drunken once a month or soaked onto
cotton which was then inserted into the vagina. There is an actual confirmed
extreme drop in birth rate at the time that the Greeks started using this. It's
effective it's not disgusting it's not weird and it doesn't even cause death.
Now we can't test the plant to find out the actual scientific effectiveness of
it as a birth control method because it worked so well that it was aggressively
over harvested and went extinct. Good job ancient Greek people. This was actually
so heavily worshipped probably because of its extreme effectiveness and not
being disgusting that it was actually put on coins. Imagine a penny but instead of
Lincoln's head on it there was an IUD. I'm not saying it's weird but it's kind
of weird. There were some other plants that were used with less historically
shown drops in birth rates and these plants include Queen Anne's lace, willow,
date palm, pomegranate, penny Royale, Artemisia, Muir, and roue. Some of these
plants work just because they're toxic but Queen Anne's lace specifically is
actually confirmed to have some anti fertility properties when used
immediately after sex and is actually still used in India today so overall
from my research on historical birth control methods Silphium seems to be
the only really good option so good that they went
and killed it which is just kind of really sad. It's pretty clear that the vast majority
of those aren't things you can use in your fantasy story so let's instead cover
some magical options. Method number seven magic spells or liquid control.
Fetus deletus? No? Okay? How about accio sperm? More acceptable but possibly more
messy for the user. In terms of the liquid control one there is actually a
book that did it and that is symphony of Ages where Ash the main character uses
his ability to control liquid to keep his sperm from entering the woman's
body. Now I haven't read that book so I don't know how well that actually reads
in the context of a book but it was used. Number six an amulet or another magical
object. Maybe an amulet containing the souls of a hundred ball-less weasels?
No? I mean you don't have to specify that the souls are of weasels. You could
always go the vague route. But this is a fairly common one used in fantasy. Method
number five potions made out of the ground-up testicles of beavers. Wait... This
one belongs in the historical section. Yes,
Canada had a thing against weasels or beavers however you choose to look at it.
So they threw out the weasels and went with beaver balls instead and being the
clever little things that they were they decided consumption was a better
method than tying the balls around one's leg and it actually turns out it was a
little bit effective because of the testosterone in the Beavers balls I
guess. Number four magical sterility like how the female vampires in Twilight were
supposedly sterile because their bodies stay exactly how they were when they die
or whatever. Now can we pause a moment cuz I've always had a super annoying
question about that what about the women who died pregnant do they just stay
pregnant forever does the baby inside them become a vampire how does that work?
I don't know if I actually want answers. But yeah magical sterility is a common
method of birth control in fantasy novels either through characters that
have some sort of curse or characters that are unable to reproduce because of
whatever magical group they fall into. For example in
Witcher the witcher's are sterile because of deliberate mutations that
they went through to become witchers. Method number three the he's from this
magical other species and there's no historical record of pregnancy ever
working between those magical other species and this plain human girl method
otherwise called chromosome mismatch. If your one character is human and your
other characters some other kind of species like elves or dwarfs or whatever
and they happen to have a different chromosome number you can use this also
if there's some other sort of incompatibility to where they wouldn't be able
to reproduce you can also use this. Remember if you use this once
you can't magically have them have a baby later because reasons. Method number
two magical control over one's body. Sadly humans don't have this but
there are actually animals that do. Certain rodents can hold their uterus hostage
until the male has shown them a good time and a lion heard... heard? Is heard the
right word? Lion pride. A lioness with Cubs which take about 25 weeks to rear
can magically (seemingly magically) not get pregnant despite having sex also in
times where a new male has taken over, the female's body will delay ovulation
for a time likely to ensure that the new male can keep his position as leader
before she commits to him. Now this probably isn't in any way a conscious
decision on the part of the lioness but if your character can actively sprout
wings or heal a gash in the manner of an hour you can get away with saying that
she can control her ovulation and this is actually used in the Dragonera series.
Magical fantasy method of birth control number one is divine intervention and
this is where the woman can only get pregnant if she says a prayer or lights
a candle or whatever. The biologist in me cringes here.
I know it's magic, I get it, but how was anyone born before they had language or
the knowledge of these deities or candles? Like I have so many questions. I
don't like this one. Kushiel's Legacy does this. They had to pray to their
God and light a candle and ask the God to open up their womb
and again I ask you how was anyone born before the time when candles were
invented? So yes this one is widely accepted but I cannot personally endorse it.
And now for my conclusion and what I think is probably your best option to go
with for writing birth control in fantasy. Potions or concoctions made from
herbs. I mean you've made up this entire
fantasy world so inventing a plant really isn't that much of a stretch its
perfectly believable and then just have your characters turn that plant into a
potion or a tea. You could say they drink it once a month or that they drink it
right after sex. I personally like tea here because they can carry the dry
leaves around with them all they need is hot water the leaves won't go bad you
can even make it readily available for wild romps in the forest and best of all
it doesn't read as unrealistic because again we had Silphium back in Greek times
which was an actual wild herb that people would drink once a month and it
worked as a form of birth control and maybe it's one of the more common
methods but it's also tried and tested and when it comes to birth control you
just need a tiny line telling your readers that that's something you
considered and something that your characters are responsible enough to
consider. It doesn't need to be super innovative. And yeah that was it for this
video. If you write post- apocalyptic or
dystopian then check out the video links in the description down below if you
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