At first glance, the small blue, pink and yellow plastic cases in the Marvin Samson Museum for the History of Pharmacy could be mistaken for vintage makeup compacts.
But they are actually hormonal contraceptive pill packs spanning from 1972 to 1989. These pill packs are now part of St. Joe’s College of Pharmacy Museum Collection.
Twelve Ortho Pharmaceutical Corporation packs entered the collection in 1998 from the pharmacy practice department’s Model Pharmacy, which was dismantled that same year. The donors of two Syntex Laboratories, Co. packs remain unknown, according to Emma Gunuey-Marrs, collection manager and assistant curator for the museum.
The 14 total pill packs, designed to be feminine and discreet, help tell the story of birth control in the United States.
“Women’s health history is pharmacy history,” Gunuey-Marrs said.
In 1941, chemistry professor Russell Marker discovered a way to produce synthetic progesterone, an active hormone in birth control pills, by using Mexican wild yams known as “cabeza de negro.”
This research expanded in the 1950s when biologist Gregory Pincus, Ph.D., and obstetrician and gynecologist Dr. John Rock began human trials to suppress ovulation under the guise of a “fertility study.” It was financially backed by suffragist Katharine McCormick.
Because U.S. laws limited contraceptive research, Pincus and Rock began the first extensive human clinical trials in impoverished areas of San Juan, Puerto Rico.
In the trials, Puerto Rican women test subjects were administered a potent version of the medicine (with greater dosages of hormones than modern-day birth control) without being informed they were participating in a study or that there were risks involved. Three women died during trials, but no autopsies or investigations were conducted.
Ultimately, the trials ended up being successful in suppressing ovulation.
One of the pill packs in the Pharmacy Museum Collection was manufactured in Puerto Rico over 15 years after the pilot tests in San Juan.
By 1957, the Food and Drug Administration approved Enovid (G.D. Searle & Company’s formulation of the drug) to treat “severe menstrual disorders,” and in 1960, it became the first oral contraceptive approved to prevent pregnancy. Within seven years, more than 12 million women worldwide were taking “the pill,” which became a significant turning point for both women’s reproductive health and the pharmaceutical industry.
Donna Drucker, Ph.D., historian of gender and sexuality and assistant director in the office of scholarship and research development at Columbia University School of Nursing, said the museum’s collection of contraceptives serves as a way for people to present themselves through pharmaceutical objects, particularly those kept “hidden behind a cupboard.”
“They’re supposed to be discreet, kind of non-threatening, even though this is the technology that really rocketed around the world and changed a lot about how women could manage their pregnancies and sense of self and bodily autonomy,” Drucker said.
Preserving these artifacts, Drucker said, “teaches us how people manage fertility, either by restricting it in the case of contraceptives, or by promoting it in the case of something like IVF medication.”
The contraceptives are currently on display in Section A of “Indications,” an exhibition at the Samson Museum in Griffith Hall running from Aug. 15 through Nov. 29.
The exhibition highlights the work of artist-in-residence Teresa Cervantes, M.F.A., associate professor of sculpture at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, who incorporates historical pharmaceutical objects through contemporary art to express how medicine reflects people’s livelihood, whether that be their aspirations or their fears.
Although not solely focused on women’s health history, Gunuey-Marrs said the exhibit, “Indications,” contains a “femaesthetic” and “femme affinity” that brings this history into focus.
“This show isn’t about contraception, per se,” Gunuey-Marrs said. “But this show is about all of the products that we use to care for ourselves and all of the techniques and modes that come into that practice. To leave contraception out of that would be a huge oversight.”
