"John Riddle has established his reputation as a leading expert on ancient Greek pharmacology. In an earlier study, “Contraception and Abortion from the Ancient World to the Renaissance’’, he argued that a much more reliable knowledge of oral contraceptives existed in the ancient and medieval worlds than had previously been thought. In this book, Riddle attempts a broader but partly overlapping study, a history of abortion and contraception in the Western tradition (Europe and the United States, with a glance at the Islamic World). More specifically, he challenges the common view that oral contraception was little practiced and largely ineffective until the 18th century…"