What methods did ancient women use to prevent pregnancy?

In ancient times, even if a man loved some women, they could not marry them. Therefore, pregnancy is not allowed during sexual intercourse. This is not only a disgrace to the family, but may even be considered shameless due to feudal thinking. Therefore, people at that time were also very concerned about contraception, but some methods were not scientific. So what methods did ancient women use to prevent pregnancy?

It is said that putting musk into a prostitute's navel can prevent pregnancy. For example, there are records of the two sisters Zhao Feiyan and Zhao Hede, who are considered the most "disaster-causing beauties" in China, taking such contraceptive measures. Of course, the sisters Zhao Feiyan and Zhao Hede cannot be called prostitutes, but they did end up in the same place. This kind of sticker for the navel is called "Laodu sticker". If you stick it on the belly button, it can end the conception function of a woman's belly and she will no longer be able to get pregnant. However, this "belly patch" has been lost.

Before the emergence of modern contraceptives, the contraceptive measures used by women in the past were rarely recorded in history books, were not common in unofficial history, and were also downplayed in film and television dramas. There is a plot in a movie starring Gong Li: a prostitute drinks a kind of medicine before receiving a customer, which is said to prevent her from getting pregnant.

There are also folk records that saffron is a secret contraceptive recipe passed down from the palace. It is said that if the emperor does not like a favored palace maid, he will let the eunuch hang the palace maid upside down and wash her lower body with saffron liquid. It is said that this can wash the semen in the palace maid's body. There are also some unofficial histories that say that in the past, after the emperor favored a concubine, if he did not want to keep the semen, the eunuch would help the woman with massage to ensure that the emperor's semen would not remain in the woman's body, thus achieving the effect of contraception.

Even now, there is no 100% effective contraceptive measure. Wei Xiaobao is the product of contraceptive failure. In the past, many prostitutes became infertile for life after they became good women. This was because they drank a kind of decoction for a long time that destroyed their fertility and became sterile. It was also said that they took a kind of contraceptive medicine called "cooling medicine", which also contained musk, which would affect fertility but not necessarily sterilize them.

The above introduction has clearly stated what methods ancient women used for contraception. Contraception is actually for the purpose of preventing unwanted pregnancies, but most methods involve certain risks and may even endanger women’s safety without considering how serious the final consequences will be. It can be said that it is women who are ultimately harmed.