Birth Control. Although criticized by social and religious moralists since the Middle Ages, attempts to avoid pregnancy always existed, and by the nineteenth century men and women had more-successful contraceptive methods available to them. In the eighteenth century French observers such as Jean-Baptiste Moheau (1745- 1794) railed against birth control. He argued that "rich women, for whom pleasure is the greatest objective and the sole preoccupation, are not the only ones who regard the propagation of the species as a trickery of past times: already these deadly secrets, unknown to any animal other than man, these secrets have penetrated into the countryside: nature is cheated even in the villages." Much traditional lore about methods of contraception spread from generation to generation through word of mouth. Methods of varying success—such as herbal contraceptives, potions, and magic—had been available since the...