Contraception: A History [2003] by Robert Jütte, Vicky Russell

Abstract

144 BOOKREVIEWS policy scholars). As such, moves to further embrace the market in countries such as Britain and Denmark are not covered. While eminently readable as a whole, toward the end of the book there is a slight feeling of repetition as, once again, key assertions are reemphasised . Such issues, however, should not detract from what is likely to become, for those concerned about big issues to do with health policy and system design, one of the great books of the decade. ROBIN GAULD UNIVERSITY OF OTAGO RobertJutte, Contraception: A History [2003], translatedby Vicky Russell (Cambridge UK: Polity Press 2008). ISBN- 13:978-074563271 -1. 255 pp. Robert Jutte's Contraception: A History, firstpublished in German in 2003 and then translatedinto English by Vicky Russell in 2008, attempts to survey the history of birth control from ancient times through the twentieth century in the brief space of 220 pages. The book consists of five chapters. The first covers the period of the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Romans; the second surveys from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment; the thirdtakes up the nineteenth century; the fourth scans the twentieth century; and the fifth- just five pages long- introduces the male pill as a possible 'contraceptive of the future.' The subject of birthcontrol has been well mined by historians. While some have undertakensweeping surveys, otherauthorshave narrowed the subject by time period or geographical region, and still others have focused on one type of contraceptive method. Countless books and articles on numerous topics in the history of contraception have been written in the past three decades, and so we might welcome a new synthesis of all this scholarship as a useful volume for reference and teaching. Unfortunately, Contraception:AHistory falls shortof this goal. Although Jutte promises in his introduction 'to take into account critical changes which indicate the production, acquisition, and circulation of "power-knowledge'"(p. 8), a Foucauldian analysis is absent from the rest of the text. The reader finds only a few Health& History• 10/2 • 2008 145 scattered mentions of power, included almost as afterthoughts. The first chapter catalogs a myriad of references to birth control mined from sources ranging from Ovid and the Old Testament to Lysistrataand the Babylonian Talmud, presumably to demonstrate the breadth of contraceptive knowledge among the ancients, while the second chapter presents a pastiche of information on demographics, lay knowledge of reproduction, and theological pronouncements on sex. Similarly, the chapters on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are replete with examples of contraceptive practices and policies, without any overarching framework for the analysis of historical trends. The narrative skips from country to country (although with just a single passing reference to Australia and no mention at all of New Zealand); this transnationalapproach does not allow for sufficient consideration of the significance of local contexts in shaping the uses of and attitudes toward birth control. The author is diligent in his citations of the work of other historians, but several of his claims are undocumented, which is frustratingfor the readerwho wants to use this book as a scholarly reference. For example, he declares that, 'We know this [that many women took offence at contraceptive advertising in the late nineteenth century] from a contemporary source' (p. 132), but he gives no citation for that source. The statement that 'even today, sterilizations are still being ordered by the courts in the United States' (p. 177) begs for a reference, but there is no corresponding endnote. These omissions detract from the academic reliability of the work, and the lack of a synthetic thesis to tie together all of the disparate details in the narrative might deter instructors from assigning the text for classroom use. However, readers looking for a descriptive compendium of contraceptive knowledge, attitudes, and practices over the course of almost four thousand years of history will find many entertaining stories in this book. ELIZABETH SIEGEL WATKINS UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN FRANCISCO ...