Around midnight on September 16, 1866, Dr. W. A. Wilcox of Saint Louis, Missouri, was called to the home of “Mrs. L,” a thirty-year-old married mother of two. Mr. L had been out for the evening and returned home at eleven to find his wife unconscious. When Dr. Wilcox arrived, Mrs. L was pale and clammy; her breathing was heavy, her pulse was “feeble and quick,” and her extremities were cold. Her pupils did not contract when he shone light directly at them. Believing that she might have overdosed on opium, he forced “an emetic and fifteen to twenty drops of fluid extract of belladonna” down her throat every half hour and waited. After about three hours, Mrs. L began vomiting and regained consciousness. “The vomited matter,” Wilcox observed, “consisted of liquid smelling strongly of pennyroyal.”[1] When Mrs. L recovered enough to talk to the doctor, she told him she “had taken a teaspoonful of oil of pennyroyal” at nine in the evening before she went to bed. She had done this “in order to bring on her menses, which had been due several days.” Dr. Wilcox made no comment on this, except to note that Mrs. L began menstruating on September 17.
While “bringing on the menses” may sound to modern readers like code for abortion, it is impossible to say for certain that Mrs. L was trying to terminate a pregnancy. Regular menstruation was considered essential for a woman’s health, and many women took drugs – called “emmenagogues” – to bring on their menses if they were late. Most of the drugs used as emmenagogues could also be used as abortifacients. In Missouri in 1866, “bringing on the menses” was perfectly legal; inducing an abortion was not. Mrs. L may have lied to Dr. Wilcox about her intentions – or she may have been perfectly straightforward.
The drug in question, pennyroyal, is a species of mint with purple flowers. It smells like spearmint. And it has been used as an abortifacient for over two thousand years.
About half of all abortions in the United States are now medication abortions. In the past, that percentage was much higher. Up until the 20th century, most abortions, like Mrs. L’s, were medication abortions. A “surgical” abortion involved penetrating the cervix with some kind of sharp instrument. It was agonizingly painful and extremely dangerous. Even if the operation was successful at terminating the pregnancy, the ensuing infection could be deadly. Only with the advent of anesthesia and antisepsis in the late nineteenth century did surgical abortions become anything other than a desperate last resort. Most abortions were managed with medication, administered orally, vaginally, or topically. The medicines used were almost all herbal, and most had very long histories.