Just when women began to use douches of various astringent solutions as a contraceptive is lost to history. Many of the herbal compounds mentioned elsewhere were probably administered as douches, although the sources do not specifically say so. Any strongly alkaline or acid condition will tend to provide a hostile environment for sperm. Alum, for example, is often mentioned in the literature of birth control and was readily available because it was used in dyeing and tanning. Both brine and vinegar are highly spermicidal. Acetic acid immobilizes human sperm in 10 to 15 seconds at a ratio of one part to two thousand. For example, ordinary vinegar is between 4 and 5 percent acetic acid, with wine vinegar running to 6 percent. Two tablespoons of vinegar to a quart of water is stronger than 1 to 1,000 and is probably the most effective home remedy for douching readily available.
Douches were well known to many eighteenth-century French women and were perhaps more widely used in France than elsewhere because of the use of the bidet among the well-to-do French. Vinegar water was used as the solution. Douching was the method most recommended by Charles Knowlton, an early advocate of birth control in the United States. He gave recommendations for a variety of douche solutions made of alum, zinc sulfate (a solution used for preserving skins and bleaching paper and as a general all-purpose astringent), bicarbonate of soda, common vinegar, and ordinary salt. His recipes for preparation usually involved small amounts (a thimble or teaspoon, or occasionally a great spoon) of the ingredients mixed with water. He did advise some testing before use and wrote that the woman should make it as strong as she could bear without producing disagreeable sensations. Douching also temporarily changes the pH of the vagina.
Rubber douching syringes were available from retail and wholesale outlets in the United States by the 1840s. When dissemination about birth control methods was either illegal or regarded as of doubtful morality in the United States, douche solutions were advertised in magazines aimed at women as a means of keeping themselves clean and fresh and as a necessity for personal feminine hygiene. One of the advertisers was the manufacturer of Lysol, which was also used to clean toilets of germs. The company advised women to douche regularly since without douching some minor physical irregularity plants in a woman’s mind the fear of a major crisis [read: delayed menstrual period and fear of pregnancy]. Lest so devastating a fear recur again and again, and the most charming and gracious wife turns into a nerve-ridden, irritable travesty of herself. Bewildering, to say the least, to even the kindest husband. Fatal inevitably to the beauty of the marriage relation (Himes, 1970, p. 329).
All such worries and anxiety would disappear by using the Lysol method, which destroys germs in the presence of organic matter. The advertisement concluded that there was no free caustic alkali in the product, such as found in chlorine compounds. They did not add that using it or other such solutions frequently and in overstrong solutions scarred the cervix and, although it probably helped prevent pregnancy, if it was taken long enough and strong enough it might well have caused sterility.
Douching remained a major part of woman’s hygiene well into the last part of the twentieth century. It was a major part of the diaphragm method of contraception for many women, and when the woman removed her diaphragm in the morning after having inserted it the evening before, she often douched to remove the sper-micide that was used in conjunction with the diaphragm. Women who did so were advised to use a mild vinegar solution or plain water and to avoid strong astringent solutions.
