Tuesday, September 5, 2017

The Birth Of The Pill

  • February, 1955
  • James Reson
  • New York Times 
********************************************


The Birth of the Pill: 
How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution
Jonathan Eig 
c. 2014, 
softcover

I assume the four crusaders are:
  • Sanger
  • McCormick
  • Pincus
  • Rock 
Honorable mention: Dr Edris Rice-Wray
Preface to the book:
Sexual intercourse began
In nineteen sixty-three
(which was rather late for me) --
Between the end of the Chatterley ban
And the Beatles' first LP. -- Philip Larkin, "Annus Mirabilis"
For me, sexual intercourse began a decade later than for Philip Larkin. By then "the pill" was ubiquitous. It was only later -- much later -- did I really understand the social issues associated with the development and the subsequent use of the pill.

It would not necessarily have been an easy choice for young women to start taking "the pill" in the late 60s or the 70s.

I only knew a few details about the first "love of my life." Our whirlwind courtship was very, very short; and ended too quickly. We parted but I never forgot her. It was our relationship that brought home in very real and very personal terms the meaning of "unrequited love." I will take that "unrequited love" to my grave. She died some years ago, in her prime, of a rare heart disease, complications of a heart transplant. We never got in touch after we departed.

Harry Chapin in "Taxi" tells our story, except her path and my path never crossed again.

So, now in the autumn of my life, to coin a phrase, I try to piece together her biography, something Virginia Woolf might do  (think Mrs Dalloway).

She was a feminist at the time the feminist movement was at its peak. She asked me to read Open Marriage. We discussed monogamy and faithfulness but also independent lives even after marriage. Those "things" converged and all of a sudden I find myself in my "Margaret Sanger phase" and would love to have someone to talk to about her story/life.

It was in my "Margaret Sanger phase" that I stumbled upon Jonathan Eig's book. Reading some of it suggests it will help me put together a biography of the first "love of my life."

Another example of this biography involves the Broadway play Hamilton. While watching a documentary of the play, I learn that the Burr-Hamilton duel was on the New Jersey side of the Hudson River just opposite 42nd Street, NYC.

Looking at the map, I see there is now a Hamilton Park in that area. It is but a 30-minute drive from where the first "love of my life" grew up. I can only assume her father took the family there at least once on some weekend holiday. If not, it certainly becomes part of the make-believe biography I am imagining.

Notes from the Jonathan Eig book will help me better understand that short but tumultuous time of our lives.

Chapter One: A Winter Night

I'm in "my Margaret Sanger phase," and there she is, at the very beginning of the book. The first person named: Margaret Sanger: "She was an old woman who loved sex and she had spent forty years seeking a way to make it better." Born, 1879; died, 1966. In 1950 she would have been 71 years old.

In 1950, her last hope; at age 71 to meet Gregory Goodwin Pincus.

She: one of the legendary crusaders of the 20th century.
He: a scientist with a genius IQ and a dubious reputation; 47 years old.

1949: Hugh Hefner, a graduate student in sociology at Northwestern University, read Kinsey's report (1948) and wrote a term paper arguing for an end to the repression of sex and sexuality in America.

Wow.

Chapter Two: A Short History of Sex

Chapter Three: Spontaneous Ovulations

Chapter Four: A Go-to-Hell Look

Chapter Five: Love and Fighter

Chapter Six: Rabbit Tests

Chapter Seven: "I'm a Sexologist"

Chapter Eight: The Socialite and the Sex Maniac

Chapter Nine: A Shotgun Question

Chapter Ten: Rock's Rebound

Chapter Eleven: What Makes a Rooster Crow?

Chapter Twelve: A Test in Disguise

Chapter Thirteen: Cabeza de Negro

Chapter Fourteen: The Road to Shrewsbury


Chapter Fifteen: "Weary & Depressed"

Chapter Sixteen: The Trouble With Women

Chapter Seventeen: A San Juan Weekend
  • a great, great chapter to read in light of Hurricane Maria (2017) and Puerto Rico; helps one understand the relationship between the US and Puerto Rico
Chapter Eighteen: The Women of the Asylum

Chapter Nineteen: John Rock's Hard Place

Chapter Twenty: As Easy As Aspirin
  • is this the climactic chapter? no pun intended; I don't know the answer; I am writing this as I am reading the book and reading Chapter Twenty; it's an incredible chapter
  • development of the pill (clandestinely) was happening in lockstep with the polio vaccine ("Polio Is Conquered" -- Pittsburgh Press -- 1955)
  • 1954, three compounds for Pincus to consider
  • norethindrone, Carl Djerassi, Syntex, Mexican-based drug company
  • norethynodrel, Frank Colton, Searle
  • a third, unnamed drug, Pfizer; but Pfizer's owners were Catholic and refused to let Pincus test the compound as a potential contraceptive
  • side-effects
  • norethindrone: some women developed slightly masculine characteristics
  • Colton's formula did not; unexplained; compounds so similar
  • Pincus selected Searle's compound, norenthyndrel
Chapter Twenty-One: A Deadline to Meet
  • March, 1955: Pincus had deadline; he promised to announce his "birth control pill" in Tokyo, on October 28, 1955 
  • March, 1955: Pincus had not yet settled on a precise formula for this pill, nor had it even been tested on more than a handful of women
  • he was not bothered; after all, he had seven months to do all that
  • he decided to test both norethynodrel (SC-4642) and norethindrone; both more powerful than the natural progesterone and seemed to work even if taken orally
  • tested on 23 female medical students in Puerto Rico; if they refused, their instructor said their refusal would affect their grades
  • requirements: diaries, urine test, temperature readings, Pap smears
  • half dropped out: the pills made them sick or the requirements were so "bothersome"
  • Plan B: nurses at San Juan City Hospital -- they refused
  • Plan C: inmates at Vega Baja in Puerto Rico -- the inmates refused
  • Sanger was 76 years old, living in Tucson
  • page 206: "As he prepared to depart for Tokyo, Pincus was about to make one of the greatest bluffs in the history of modern science. He was preparing to announce that an oral contraceptive for humans was nearly ready when, in fact, had not yet decided which form of the contraceptive worked best and at which dose. If that weren't enough, he still hadn't found enough women willing to serve as test subjects."
Chapter Twenty-Two: "The Miracle Tablet Maybe"

Chapter Twenty-Three: Hope to the Hopeless

Chapter Twenty-Four: Trials

Chapter Twenty-Five: "Papa Pincus's Pink Pills for Planned Parenthood"

Chapter Twenty-Six: Jack Searle's Big Bet

Chapter Twenty-Seven: The Birth of the Pill

Chapter Twenty-Eight: "Believed to Have Magical Powers"

Chapter Twenty-Nine: The Double Effect

Chapter Thirty: La Senora de las Pastillas

Chapter Thirty-One: An Unlikely Pitch Man

Chapter Thirty-Two: "A Whole New Bag of Beans"

Chapter Thirty-Three: Climax

Epilogue

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