Medicine: Gromwell the Protector?

Within 100 years, says President James Bryant Conant of Harvard, science will have found a safe contraceptive that can be taken by mouth and the world will have a remedy for overpopulation. Last week British researchers reported an early lead in that direction. They had made an extract from a common countryside herb called gromwell (Lithospermum officinale) and given it first to female rats. The rats stopped ovulating. When the gromwell was stopped, they promptly resumed ovulating and proved, by becoming pregnant, that their fertility had been only temporarily arrested.

Next, the researchers gave the gromwell extract to humans to check for harmful effects. They found none. Then they made tests to see whether a woman taking gromwell continued to ovulate. She did not. Finally, they withdrew the gromwell and she resumed normal ovulation.

One swallow of gromwell (or any of a dozen other chemicals on which scientists are working) does not make a contraceptive summer. But the case for gromwell has a bit of legendary support: Shoshone Indians have long insisted that an extract from the western species (Lithospermum ruder ale) helps them to control the size of their families.