"Conscious of the hazards inherent in the use of interuterine devices, Dr Grafenberg took up the search for the serviceable IUD in the early 1920s. Whether he knew about Dr Richter's pessary remains an open question. Initially, he used star-shaped devices and coils of silkworm gut (1924). Because they were expelled too readily, he conceived the Ring IUD, made of helicoidal1y wound silver filaments, which still bears his name. He did not hesitate to publish clinical results (1928-30), thus making his invention known beyond the boundaries of his native Germany. Shortly thereafter, other European physicians added statistics, issuing an increasing number of damaging reports of pelvic inflammatory disease associated with IUD use. Gräfenberg's last presentation on the subject was in 1931 at the German Congress of Gynecology in Frankfurt. His report was denounced by virtually all leaders of German gynecology attending the congress, who branded intrauterine contraception as a medically unacceptable method of birth control. Shortly thereafter, the streamroller of the Nazi regime started poisoning the air of Germany. Jewish physicians were removed from the hospital posts and contraception was proclaimed to be a threat to the physical and mental health of Aryan women. Ultimately, the advertising of contraceptives and/or contraceptive advice became illegal in Germany and the other Axis States. Barred from practice and research, ostracized by his colleagues and persecuted by the authorities, Dr Gräfenberg left Germany in 1940. He arrived in New York in 1941, where he resumed a busy life as an obstetrician and gynecologist. His scientific reputation opened the doors of a teaching hospital (Mount Sinai Medical Center) and the New York Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau (later renamed Margaret Sanger Research Bureau after the nurse who convinced America that control of conception is a basic human right). Dr Gräfenberg was able to resume his research, but in America, as well as in Europe, the fight for the acceptance of family planning had not yet been won. Notwithstanding these barriers, Dr Gräfenberg, according to his friend and his former Berlin assistant Dr Hans Lehfeld, transgressed medical rules and continued to use the Ring, albeit in private practice and in secret."