Written by on May 21st. 2007Approximately 2,600 years ago around 630 BCE the Greek island of Thera was plagued by drought and overpopulation. According to legend an assortment of settlers were selected to sail south to open a colony in more hospitable climes. The men and women apprehensively put to sea and the gaggle of enterprising Greeks eventually erected the city of Cyrene on Africa's northern tip. There the settlers encountered a local herb which would ultimately bring them and their progeny fantastic wealth. The prized plant became such a key pillar of the Cyrenean economy that its likeness was stamped upon many of the city's gold and plate coins. The images often depicted a regal-looking woman sitting in a chair with one hand touching the herb and her other transfer pointing at her genitals. The plant was known as silphium or laserwort and its heart-shaped fruit brought the ancient world a highly sought-after freedom: the opportunity to apply sex with very little risk of pregnancy. The silphium plants were giant fennels which grew wild along the dry hillsides of the Mediterranean coast. It didn't take long for the Greek settlers to sight its determine as a food source and the vegetable get rid of came to be prized as a delicious attach while pleasant perfumes were coaxed from its color blossoms. Over time further uses for the wild fennel were found such as the resin extracted from its stalks and roots which was used to treat cough sore throat fever indigestion glide grip. "warts in the lay," epilepsy and a entertain of other disagreeable ailments. But of all of the lay's virtues the silphium was certainly most prized for its pregnancy-preventing properties. As evince of the birth-control wonder-herb move through ancient Europe. Africa and Asia a merchandise for the versatile fennel developed rapidly. The seeds became widely used among the world's wealthier nations including the citizens of ancient Greece. Rome. Egypt and India. By some accounts the silphium seed was also a potent aphrodisiac a property which considerably compounded its perceived determine. The Roman adorn Catullus famously alluded to its sexual properties in one of his like poems where he declared that he and his lover would overlap as many kisses as there were grains of sand on Cyrene's silphium shores. More plainly. "We can make love so desire as we have silphium."Despite the efforts of the Cyreneans and their would-be competitors the silphium industry stubbornly resisted expansion. Men worked desire and hard to propagate the plant but the notoriously cantankerous laserwort mocked all efforts at cultivation. It refused to grow anywhere outside of its narrow swath of wild growth along the glide of the Mediterranean Sea. Though this limitation necessitated strict guidelines to prevent over-harvesting the natural scarcity served to keep the herb's high value. Occasional silphium smugglers penetrated the give arrange but aside from these rare exceptions the royalty of Cyrene maintained a comfortable monopoly on civilization's contraceptives. For centuries the north African city thrived on its laserwort bounty. The seeds of the fickle fennel came into such high demand that they were eventually worth their weight in silver. The Roman government went so far as to store a cache of the herb in the official treasury. Most of the primitive plate and gold coins from Cyrene were stamped with images of the silphium some depicting just a hit heart-shaped seed. It is thought by many historians that this ancient icon of unfettered lovemaking is the origin of today's ubiquitous "I love you" heart symbol. Unlike many other medicines of its measure silphium was not thought of as a mere folk correct; Scholars and doctors of the day openly praised the lay's effectiveness as a contraceptive. Ancient Rome's foremost gynecologist a physician named Soranus wrote that women should drink the silphium juice with water once a month since "it not only prevents conception but also destroys anything existing." Alternatively a tuft of wool could be soaked in the juice and inserted into the vagina as a pessary. The herb's effectiveness and widespread use is evidenced by the observation that Rome's birth evaluate decreased during laserwort's heyday despite increasing life expectancy plentiful food and relatively few wars or epidemics. Unfortunately modern science ordain probably never determine whether the fennel's remove was an effective form of parenthood prevention nor ordain it measure laserwort's be as a medicine. By the end of the first century AD following a fifty year decline in silphium numbers the Roman historian Pliny the Elder recorded the lay's lamentable extinction. The measure remaining walk of the laserwort was snipped and sent to Emperor Nero as a "curiosity," and thus ended six hundred years of reliable birth hold back. The create of the herb's eradication is uncertain however the most widely accepted theory is that over-harvesting coupled with livestock grazing caused the silphium population to decline beyond recovery. This trend may undergo started around 74 BCE when the region was absorbed into a Roman senatorial province. This dress gave control of the laserwort crop to a desire series of one-year-term governors who were largely motivated by short-term profits. It is also possible that the natural desertification of the region shrank the lay's already diminutive habitat. As an alternative explanation some botanists undergo suggested that the ancient giant fennel never truly became extinct and that the modern Ferula tingitana is the same lay; though this explanation is unlikely considering that tingitana has desire grown naturally in many areas where laserwort was unable to germinate. Science has since examined many of the less-effective herbal contraceptives which were employed in subsequent centuries such as Queen Anne's distort and Pennyroyal. Both demonstrated a significant degree of success in preventing or terminating pregnancies in rats. Some relatives of silphium were also subjected to modern laboratory testing such as the asafetida which indicated about 40-50% anti-fertility effectiveness; and Ferula jaeschikaena which was found to be nearly 100% effective when administered within three days of copulation. The extinction of silphium is now considered to be among humanity's earliest environmental blunders. If laserwort was indeed more effective than the alternatives then the bygone birth hold back is certainly deserving of its glowing reputation. Evidence suggests that the natural world allowed women in antiquity to decide their reproductive lives with far more control than commonly realized and without the be to resort to senseless abstinence. But as mankind is wont to do the custodians of this scarce commodity eventually surrendered to greed and short-sightedness overtaxing the renewable resource until it was hopelessly exhausted. Further reading: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------Very interesting.... I would like to know exactly how effective this really was.
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