The Contraception Museum

By Cynthia L. Cooper, Women's eNews. Posted May 20, 2005.

Sheep intestines fashioned into a condom; crocodile dung with acidic properties for vaginal insertion; and hundreds of metal and plastic swirls, squiggles, loops and bows that form various intrauterine devices are some of the artifacts in the 11 display cases in the History of Contraception Museum in Cleveland, the nation's only museum dedicated to the world of birth control.

The museum was quietly inaugurated into the Dittrick Medical History Center of Case Western Reserve University with a March opening reception. The museum had been under consideration as a site since 2003.

"It's pretty amazing. You can tell there was a lot of struggle through time to prevent pregnancy and people would try anything they could get their hands on," said dental student Mark McCormick, who gazed into the display cases with the only other visitor, his father-in-law, a salesman of medical supplies from Utah.

The contraceptive exhibit was donated by Percy Skuy, past president of Ortho Pharmaceutical (Canada), maker of contraceptive products and pills, who began building the collection 40 years ago as what began as a trade show novelty.

Now retired and living in Toronto, Skuy is still on the lookout for new items to add to the display

While called a museum, the contraception collection is contained in 11 handsomely-designed cabinets that, at present, snake around in an oval, allowing viewers to circulate around and view its contents, including a video, artifacts and minimal textual explanations. Contained within the 1920s university building that houses the medical museum, a separate room is being fitted to house the contraception display in an area adjacent to a re-created 1930 pharmacy and an 1870 doctor's office, complete with a skeleton in a closet.

Not Yet a Major Attraction

So far, the museum is hardly a tourist attraction to rival the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, which is a mere five miles away.

"I've never heard of such a thing," said an operator for 10 years at the Convention and Visitors Bureau of Greater Cleveland.

The collection of ingenious products to prevent pregnancy extends to cervical caps, diaphragms, sponges, amulets and condoms of all sorts, from the manufactured to the homemade candy wrapper and saran wrap.

"These are intimate articles. People don't tend to save them, and for that reason, they are extremely rare," said James Edmonson, chief curator of the Dittrick Medical History Museum, who says that he wants to continue to refine the museum to add retrospective social context and descriptions to the items.

The exhibit and its 650 artifacts--ranging from beaver-testical tea believed to prevent pregnancy to tiny pills in circle packaging--may serve as a reminder to U.S. politicians that the 93 percent of U.S. women who are at risk of pregnancy and who use contraception have plenty of historical precedent.

"Some of the American political debate comes from an absence of appreciation of this long, long history of contraception practice across the globe," said Andrea Tone, a professor in the social studies of medicine at McGill University in Montreal and an advisor to the museum. She also has written a book about contraception, "Devices and Desires," published in 2001. "American society still has to come to terms with sexuality and women's sexuality and the possibilities of a society that doesn't think twice about their rights to safe, quality and affordable birth control."

Skuy added: "If people think no one should use contraception, they are entitled to their opinion. But this is the history, this is what people did."

The history, he said, shows not only technique and motivation, but attitude. "The political struggle manifests itself," he says. "When we consider how this has now become an everyday item, the answers should come through better education, better use of the products, not negative legislation."

Cynthia L. Cooper, a journalist living in New York, writes frequently about reproductive health and justice.

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