Contraceptive consumers: gender and the political economy of birth control in the 1930s

Journal of Social History, Spring, 1996 by Andrea Tone

But critics reserved their harshest comments for the most popular, affordable, and least reliable contraceptive of the day, the antiseptic douche. Noting the method's alarming failure rate - reported at the time to be as high as seventy percent - they condemned the technique as mechanically unsound and pharmacologically ineffectual. For one thing, the method's technique weakened its potential for success: by the time the solution was introduced, seminal fluid that had already penetrated the cervix and surrounding tissues was difficult to reach and negate. In addition, the method's ineffectiveness was compounded by the benignity or toxicity of the solutions themselves. Scores of douching preparations, while advertised as modern medical miracles, contained nothing more than water, cosmetic plant extracts, and table salt. On the other hand, many others, including the most popular brand, Lysol disinfectant, contained cresol (a distillate of coal and wood) or mercury chloride, either of which, when used in too high a concentration, caused severe inflammation, burning, and even death. Advertising downplayed the importance of dilution by drawing attention to antiseptics' gentleness and versatility; single ads praising Lysol's safety on "delicate female tissues" also encouraged the money-wise consumer to use the antiseptic as a gargle, nasal spray, or household cleaner. By the same token, the makers of PX, a less-known brand, sold a liquid disinfectant that ads claimed could be used interchangeably for "successful womanhood" or athlete's foot.(35)

This strategy won sales, but it did so only by jeopardizing women's health. With even one-time douching a potentially deleterious act, women guided by the logical assumption that "more was better" strove to beat the pregnancy odds by increasing the frequency of their douching and the concentration of the solution used. In one case, a nineteen-year old married woman relied on regular douching with dissolved mercury chloride tablets for birth control. Eager to avoid pregnancy, she doubled the dose and douched "several times daily." Her determination landed her in a doctor's office where she was diagnosed with acute vaginal and cervical burns. In what must have seemed to her like a grave injustice, she also learned she was pregnant.(36)

Reports on douche-related deaths and injuries and the general ineffectiveness of popular commercial contraceptive were widely discussed among concerned constituents of the health community. Sadly, however, these findings failed to prod the medical establishment as a united profession to take a resolute stand against the contraceptive scandal. Nor, regrettably, did blistering indictments of manufacturing fraud trickle down to the lay press where they might have enabled women to make informed contraceptive choices. The numerous women's magazines that published feminine hygiene ads - from McCall's to Screen Romances to the Ladies' Home Journal - were conspicuously silent about the safety and efficacy of the products they tacitly endorsed. The paucity of information impeded the development of informed consumerism. In advertising text and in many women's minds, the euphemism "feminine hygiene" continued to signify reliable contraception. For unscrupulous manufacturers eager to profit from this identification, feminine hygiene continued to be a convenient term invoked to sell products devoid of contraceptive value.