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27 Post-Partum Sexual Abstinence in Tropical Africa
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Published:January 1993
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Abstract
Post-partum taboos on sexual intercourse have been encountered in many countries throughout history. They were once advocated by medical authorities in Europe. The Greek and Roman doctors of antiquity were opposed to sexual relations during nursing, and their opinions were quoted until the nineteenth century. Galen (1951 edn.: 29) thought that the milk of the nursing mother would be spoiled because of the admixture of sperm in the mother’s blood. Soranos and Hippocrates believed that coitus and passionate behaviour provided the stimulus that reactivated menstruation. Prior to the eighteenth century, there was no medical knowledge of the biological effect of breastfeeding on amenorrhoea. Sexual abstinence, not the action of breastfeeding, was thought to delay the return of the menses. This interpretation was still widely held in Europe in the eighteenth century (see, for example, Roussel, 1813, a medical textbook with multiple editions).
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