A vast range of expert online resources. The factors controlling human fertility and the development of rational therapies to limit births are not necessarily more difficult to understand than the isolation and cure of bacterial diseases. The surgery of voluntary sterilization or early abortion is intrinsically simpler than the treatment of appendicitis or the forceps delivery of a baby.
Yet fertility regulation has diffused less rapidly through society than the means to cure disease and prevent death. This imbalance has generated an explosion in global population that is difficult to accommodate, and it has contributed to great inequalities in wealth and untold personal misery. Useful insights into current problems can be gained by looking at the history of contraceptive practice.
The aim of this chapter is to document the historical diapause between the acquisition and the application of relevant biologic knowledge to birth control; to analyze the historical factors affecting the delay; and to suggest that early 19th and 20th century attitudes toward contraception in the West are still palpable and cast their shadows over global events in the 21st century. The earliest insight into fertility regulation at the personal level dates back to the 13th century.
The Cathar or Albigensian sect celebrated the sacrament shortly before death the perfecti, or heretication, hence the word heretic. The Albigensians were persecuted mercilessly.
Among the last remnants of the sect was a group in the Pyrenean village of Montaillou. Between and , the local bishop, an obsessive man who later became Pope of Avignon, had recorded the confessions of suspected heretics verbatim to uncover incriminating evidence.
