The Forbidden Secret of Birth Control: 1,600 Years of Feminine Soap Cream in Hiding
Women’s Reproductive rights being threatened, persecuted, and repressed is not a new story. Wise Women’s Choice formula, and the method of feminine soap cream as a contraceptive has been in use for over 1600 years, but you’re just now hearing about it….why?
This method of birth control is anything but new. Not only were Invitro analysis, Case Studies, and Clinical Trials done by the World Health Organization 50 years ago and then buried, but this method dates back centuries, with the earliest references to its use dating back around 3500 years!
You see, feminine soap cream has always been the midwives’ secret. Traditionally passed to married women postpartum to protect their health and help them avoid back to back pregnancies, the history goes back across time and space, used all over the world, almost eradicated during the inquisition, only to resurface through the keepers of esoteric knowledge partnering with midwives in attempts to give women the right to choose.
In 1880 Dr. Salibury from London, England created the first patent for this method. After enduring persecution, trial, and threats he quickly took his work underground. He partnered with midwives and sympathetic chemists around the world, operated under code names for the cream, and spent 25 years doing today’s equivalent of 30 million dollars a year, all on the black market to families in the know internationally, spreading effective contraception in a time when it was purely taboo and strictly illegal.
The event of big Pharma’s roll out of conventional, toxic spermicides resulted in the imprisonment of midwives and producers alike. Anyone spreading this resource was at risk, and that effectively sent it back into the shadows, where it was again passed, midwife to midwife, generation to generation, until today.
But this magic cream did not first appear in 1880, it was a secret carried by midwives throughout the ages. It appeared in ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome, both Arab and Jewish tradition have recorded use of this method over centuries, with records of midwives giving their women a vaginal cream soap to “space the generations” being recorded across midwifery books, correspondence between midwives, royal records of Queens and King’s Mistresses alike.
Historical contraceptive recipes often called for ash water mixed with soap and lemon juice. In reality, this was the same formulation as our modern feminine soap cream. Ash water contains potash (potassium carbonate), which when boiled with oils forms potassium soap. When women added lemon juice or vinegar, they neutralizing excess alkalinity and created a balanced cream. In other words, the midwives of the past were working with the exact same chemistry — soap + potassium salts + citric acid — just under different names.
During the Inquisition tens of thousands of midwives were killed for this exact method of contraception. It later resurfaced in the 1700’s with midwives working alongside Marcelle soap producers in France. Old ads for Marcelle Soap allude to this very purpose for the ones who have the eyes to see (Note Marcelle Soap Ad below, Toilet soap was a code word for this method, and Le Petit Chat, The Little Cat was a commonly known reference in French for, well, the little cat)
This production became so widespread that there are records of investigations on both midwives and soap guilds from the Vatican, and it was made illegal to add citrus or vinegar to soap in France and Italy in attempts to squash its contraceptive use.
In Cairo Egypt in the 1500s, it was recorded that it was standard for women to receive this cream as part of their dowry. Evidence of the cream was found in Brazil with midwives giving it there, It was found in records from Ethiopia, Algeria, Morocco, South Africa, New Zealand, Australia, Burma, India, and beyond, as colonies from Europe brought their methods with them, and the Sephardic roots of this method endured throughout generations.
This lineage, midwife to midwife has been directly traced all the way down to Wise Women’s Choice today. Dr. Francoise Farron was rescued during the Holocaust when her parents were sent to Auchwitz, by Jewish Midwife Rebecca Cohen. Cohen had been passed the recipe through the Salisbury network. She recognized Francoise’s brightness at a young age and paid for her medical studies and passed the recipe down to her.
Francoise’s first patent for the cream dates back to 1974. She had told the story of discovering the soap cream herself in the shower to protect her own patent, but historical records show otherwise. Her work was in perfecting the timeless recipe for efficacy and comfort, with her experience as a Scientist at Harvard, a work which Wise Women’s Choice has been further refining to bring you the pleasure of use found in our cream today.
Three years ago, at the age of 99, Dr. Francoise Farron passed this prized recipe down to Wise’s Director and midwife Lauren Tagansky Love, with the full blessing to carry on this precious legacy.
Today we are dedicating our lives to bring this treasure to you.
Wise Women’s Choice will continue sharing a more detailed history with extensive sources coming soon… Check out our latest blog article by clicking below for a more detailed history of the world’s most ancient birth control…
