Unlike many other medicines of its time, silphium was not thought of as a mere folk remedy; Scholars and doctors of the day openly praised the plant's effectiveness as a contraceptive. Ancient Rome's foremost gynecologist– a physician named Soranus– wrote that women should drink the silphium juice with water once a month since "it not only prevents conception but also destroys anything existing." Alternatively, a tuft of wool could be soaked in the juice and inserted into the vagina as a pessary. During laserwort's heyday, Rome's birth rate decreased considerably despite increasing life expectancy, plentiful food, and relatively few wars or epidemics, and some historians cite this as evidence of the herb's effectiveness.
Unfortunately, modern science will probably never determine whether the fennel's extract was really an effective form of parenthood prevention, nor will it measure laserwort's merit as a medicine. By the end of the first century AD, following a fifty year decline in s

Interesting. But the rhyme is still correct.
"In days of old, when Knights were bold,
And condoms weren't invented.
They wrapped their socks, around their.......