Medicine: Women & Toads

Smiling like the secretive Cheshire cat, the tall, dark and handsome medical director of the American Birth Control League, Dr. Eric M. Matsner, arrived in Manhattan from London last week. In his mind was a new method of rendering women infertile for several weeks at a time. In a box which he carried were 18 South African clawed toads.

The new contraceptive is a synthetic, hormone-like substance to be administered hypodermically. It inhibits the production of ova, without which no woman can conceive. In this respect it differs from spermatoxin, an extract of spermatozoa,...