Talk:Womb veil

What is this article about
What should this article be about?
 * The particular type of occlusive pessary called a womb veil? (Which, in view of the vagary of the terminology at the time seems perhaps too specialized).
 * Occlusive pessaries in general? (In which case moving the article to occlusive pessary would be appropriate.)
 * Or perhaps, since it is mostly historical matter at the moment, this article should evolve into an article on part of the history of contraception (e.g. history of female barrier contraceptives)?

Consider Wikipedia is not a dictionary. This article (especially the lead) focused too much on the term 'womb veil', rather than on the device(s) that bore that name. Zodon (talk) 04:13, 19 April 2010 (UTC)


 * You miss the point. The call for a 'world wide' perspective is particularly off base, because the article stated in its first sentence that it was about 19th-century America. A main article on occlusive pessary already exists; it could refer to this one as a 'see also' on a more specialized topic. The article is not about the history of barrier contraception. The article is about the social and cultural aspects of the product called 'womb veil'. What was it? How was it marketed? What were the attitudes toward it? 'Womb veil' is a term specific to American culture in the 19th and early 20th century. You are attempting to dilute the article's focus. Some general information is given to demonstrate the social, legal, and moral context of contraception in 19th-century America, but primary and secondary sources are chosen only if they discuss the womb veil as a particular phenomenon. Cynwolfe (talk) 11:53, 19 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Also, this is hardly a dictionary entry, and many articles discuss terminology and synonyms. Cynwolfe (talk) 11:54, 19 April 2010 (UTC)


 * The lead only said that the term womb veil was common in America. It did not say that the devices were solely present in America.  The article says that this was based on German a treatise.  The article also discusses devices made in Europe.  It does not indicate that these devices existed solely in America.
 * There is no main article on occlusive pessary (I just created the redirect under that title, which currently leads to the (very small) article on pessaries.
 * Sorry if my discussion opener was not clear. The point is - this article currently covers a very narrow, and apparently ill-defined topic.  As such, there appears to be reasonable question as to whether there should be an article about this topic (under notability guidelines).  Since the terminology is not standardized, questions seem likely of whether this or that device is or is not covered as part of this article.  Likewise - is there enough source material not connected with the device to produce a full article.
 * However, aside from needing some editing, it seems like a reasonable start at an article.
 * As such, a reasonable approach seemed to be to consider expanding the focus. Doing so would alleviate problems of vocabulary, and ensure a large enough body of references to produce a full article.  It might also make for a more interesting article by allowing broader context.
 * So far there is nothing in the article to indicate that the womb veil is any more interesting than any of the other similar devices. (The picture presented is that this is just one of a number of similar devices.)  Perhaps expanding coverage to indicate what made this device interesting/noteworthy would help make clearer why it merits its own article.  Zodon (talk) 07:55, 20 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Are you kidding? The 'womb veil' isn't interesting? Clearly you're a man. Look, if you want to write a history of female barrier contraception for Wikipedia, please do so; it's needed. But this article is narrowly focused on the 19th American device (or devices) called the 'womb veil.' The ancient Egyptians don't go here (and were deleted), because the thing called a 'womb veil' was invented in 1864. THIS ARTICLE IS ONLY ABOUT THE DEVICE(S) CALLED THE WOMB VEIL, which was a term originally for Foote's product. That's why it's titled 'womb veil.' The article is sufficiently referenced. All references specifically refer to the 'womb veil'. If you want to write a different article, you seem to have the energy for it, so please do. I'm sure it would be well worth the effort. But call it "History of female barrier contraception," and when you get to the 19th century, please mention the American womb veil and link to this article. Cynwolfe (talk) 11:58, 20 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Response about prior use of contraceptive pessaries in separate heading.
 * The article notes various terms that it says refer to the same thing, including saying that "pessarium occlusivum" is Latin for womb veil (it might also be translated as occlusive pessary). Therefore it is far from clear that the article is just about womb veils (or that the womb veil is a unique device, rather than a term that became genericized).  Just using references that use the term womb veil will not necessarily give you a well defined topic.
 * Consider the example of Xerox, just because something is called a xerox copy does not make it relevant to an article on the xerographic copying machines made by Xerox. (Xerox branded copiers is a well defined topic, and xerographic copiers would be a well defined topic, but just using any article that referred to the word xerox would mean that inclusion of a particular device would depend not on the device, but on what term the reference happened to use.)  That is what I meant by apparently ill-defined.  Zodon (talk) 05:24, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Lead sentence

 * The standard for starting an article is to lead with what the article is about. For preference the topic of the article should be the subject of the first sentence.
 * "Womb veil" is the most common 19th-century American term for ...
 * Does not match the usual style - the phrase "Womb veil" is the topic, whereas womb veils should be the topic of the first sentence. (i.e. describe what a womb veil is, rather than discuss the name womb veil).  Likewise the first sentence is not supposed to be about the article itself.
 * "This article is about the form of barrier contraception called 'womb veil' and its medical and cultural aspects in the 19th and early-20th century United States."
 * Does not match the wikipedia style for lead sentence.


 * While the history of the name can certainly be included, that is ancillary matter for later, the first thing should be a description of the article topic, not the name, nor the article. (See Lead section).
 * So the dictionary problem is that the lead starts off like a dictionary definition, discussing names, rather than an encyclopedia - discussing what the thing is. Zodon (talk) 06:46, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Psychoanalytic perspective
This article is not 'medical' in the sense of dealing with a current medical topic. It is historical and cultural. Although the freudian analysis is a case anecdote, WIkipedia does sometimes give examples, and the interpretation of the 'womb veil' in an overtly psychoanalytic context seems interesting to me, as well as indicative of how contraception related to psychiatric practice at the time. That is, the physician himself made the connection between the dream and the social pressures the woman felt regarding contraception. Dream analysis (as far as I'm concerned) is a historical phenomenon, and thus is of cultural and historical interest. It isn't clinical, but the article is about social and cultural history as it pertains to the 'womb veil' (a non-technical term that reflects a popular usage). I think the anecdote helps present a picture of cultural attitudes. Cynwolfe (talk) 12:58, 19 April 2010 (UTC)


 * The article should say what it has to say, not just present an example for the reader to try to figure out what it means. No clear indication is given of the significance of this example is.  (Seems like trivia/undue weight).  Suggest summarize/reword it to indicate what the psychoanalytic perspectives are/were.  Then if the example is useful to illustrate the point, it might be included.
 * Anecdote and individual examples are more typical of journalism, etc., not of encyclopedias. In either case have to tell them what the example illustrates.  wp:Writing better articles, wp:What Wikipedia is not Zodon (talk) 07:09, 20 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Section moved from article for improvement.

Psychoanalytic perspective
Psychological effects were also reported. A woman who had already given birth to three healthy children sought information about birth control after her husband refused to take precautions. Becoming pregnant again, she had induced an abortion. Her fear of pregnancy had caused her to avoid intercourse and, in the Freudian psychoanalytic terms used by her doctor H.W. Frink, "suppress her libido," believing that a woman's orgasm was necessary to conceive. After a cousin directed her toward the use of a womb veil, she was troubled by a dream in which she killed family members with a red mushroom-shaped club. Later, the woman recalled attending a Bible class taught by a doctor who condemned "anything to keep from having children," saying that to do so was as bad as murdering one's family. Frink, an attending physician in the department of nervous diseases at Cornell University, saw the object wielded by the woman in her dream as a symbol combining the red rubber catheter with which she had induced her miscarriage, with the mushroom-shaped womb veil she continued to use. Frink believed that they had uncovered the etiology of her neurosis, and that her case was an example of the value of dream analysis. The patient's state of mind was said to have improved, and her desire for sex returned, after she realized she disagreed with her Bible-class instructor's view of birth control.

DYK hook
There is a comment about a DYK hook in the article. It says to edit the hook as well as the lead when editing. However there is no indication where this hook is, or how to edit it. A little searching suggests that DYK means did you know. But I was not able to find where this hook is or how to edit it. Please fix the hook, or provide a link to where to go to fix it. At the very least the comment should indicate where said hook is, and after what date the comment is no longer valid. Thanks. Zodon (talk) 08:13, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
 * The DYK for this article is already in the queue. Please refrain from eroding the article's focus on the 19th-century American device called the 'womb veil.' THIS IS NOT AN ARTICLE ABOUT THE HISTORY OF BARRIER CONTRACEPTION FOR WOMEN. It is about the 'womb veil,' which is solely a topic of 19th and early-20th century American social and medical history. Please write the history of barrier conception elsewhere. Please do not add ancient Egyptians to this article. Foote introduced the term 'womb veil' with his device in 1864.  I've not found it used after the first two decades of the 20th century. The womb veil is a phenomenon of a particular time and place. The article deals with the topic in a manner consonant with its sources, particularly Tone, Brodie, and Katz. I spent a week researching this after I happened upon the term 'womb veil' and didn't know what it was about. Your assertion above that the article is not well-referenced is groundless. Cynwolfe (talk) 11:58, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Some comments and suggestions
First, let me say that this is an excellent article. Very well written and thoroughly researched! I imagine some of the criticism regarding this article has to do with the fact that Wikipedia lacks any organized coverage of the history of female contraception, thus the desire to re-purpose your article towards a more general focus. The fact that Wikipedia contains an extensive article on the History of condoms, but very little about the history of female contraception isn't surprising. However, I do believe that this article can stand on its own. There are a few paragraphs, however, that are not entirely specific to womb veils and at some point in the future perhaps should be moved to a more general article (or used as the basis for beginning such an article).

I do have a couple of specific suggestion for improving the article. The Social history section seems to follow a chronological order with the notable exception of Emma Goldman. Goldman was not a contraceptive activist until the beginning of the 20th Century, so perhaps she should be moved to later in that section rather than being presented at the beginning. I would also encourage you to become familiar with Wikipedia's citation templates, as they help enforce a consistent citation style across the project. If you ever get to the point of nominating the article for featured article status, use of the citation templates will be expected. Your current citations are entirely acceptable, however, so this is just a suggestion, not a criticism. Kaldari (talk) 15:45, 22 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Yes, I see what you mean about Goldman — her positioning in the article is not meant to be chronological, but if the context appears generally chronological, it will look as if that's the intention.


 * Because of the way 20th/21st-century social historians discussed the womb veil, it seemed necessary to give more of the broader context of contraceptive issues in 19th-century America. Although it may seem that these paragraphs aren't particular to to the womb veil (and indeed do often apply to other forms of contraception as well), this kind of background was provided only if the womb veil was specifically named in the discussion — that is, if the womb veil was both part of 19th-century discourse on the subject, and modern social historians discussed it as such. The one exception is the last paragraph. Although the womb veil was specifically condemned by those who feared "race suicide," it was not mentioned as one of the devices used by black Americans, for instance. This does raise a good question about the origin and purpose of the article, which I'll post below. Cynwolfe (talk) 12:57, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Historical oversimplification on origin of contraceptive pessaries
Since there are records of contraceptive pessaries going back to ancient Egypt it does not make sense to say that "The contraceptive use of pessaries likely arose from the 19th-century practice of correcting a prolapsed uterus with such a device;"

compare to: "There are historic records of Egyptian women using a pessary made of various acidic substances and lubricated with honey or oil. "

While some might maintain that contraceptive pessaries were a new development in the 19th century, there are clearly other views on the matter. I edited the history to make it clearer that such a 19th century development would be at best a redevelopment of something that is much older. However that was reverted.

Although it is asserted that this article is just about a device called the womb veil, no technology is developed without antecedents. The article acknowledges some such antecedents (such as German cervical caps). Wikipedia policy is to include relevant alternate views, (e.g., that contraceptive pessaries are a 19th century development, versus that they were used long before that), not to present just one. Zodon (talk) 05:02, 23 April 2010 (UTC)


 * OK, I'm going to call in some outside opinions on this. Again, you're missing the point: this is about the womb veil, and its use in the 19th century. It's not about the history of occlusive pessaries. Cynwolfe (talk) 11:59, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
 * The pessary used by ancient Egyptians is very different than the modern idea of a contraceptive pessary. The problem is that there are 2 different definitions of a "pessary". The historical definition (from the Latin pessarium) includes both types of uses while the dominant modern definition only includes diaphragm-like devices made of rubber, silicon, or plastic. Perhaps the wording in the sentence could be made more specific to eliminate the ambiguity. Regardless, we do not want to imply that there is a technological link between womb veils and Egyptian pessaries. They are two different types of contraceptives developed independently. Kaldari (talk) 13:21, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I've tried revising the wording so that it is clear the article is talking specifically about rubber pessaries (rather than pessaries in the historical sense). Kaldari (talk) 13:45, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Origin and purpose of article
I posted this article innocently and didn't expect it to be controversial. I found the term "womb veil" while researching a topic pertaining to the history of gynecology in antiquity, my usual area of contributing. I looked it up on Wikipedia, and found only a passing mention in (of all articles!) Sexuality of Abraham Lincoln. Again, this points to its distinctly 19th-century American character.

My only aim was to provide an article for anyone else who likewise encountered the term and tried to look it up. This requires more than a dictionary entry, because it isn't a simple matter to say what it was. Usage of the term is limited to 19th-century and early 20th-century American English, as far as I can determine. It applies first to the product marketed by Foote, and then becomes the most common term for certain related forms of female barrier contraception of the diaphragm/cervical cap type. The term seems to disappear with the medicalization of birth control in the 1920s (maybe no mention after 1912 or so). 'Womb veil' was neither a single device, nor a term that could apply to just any form of inserted contraceptive device. Rather, the usage of the term reflects a medical and social reality before the professionalization or medicalization of birth control. It is significant as a reflection of contraceptive attitudes and practices that are specific to 19th-century America up to ca. 1920.

Researching "womb veil" also led to my posting an article, or the start of one, on the Popular Health Movement of the Jacksonian Era, which seemed necessary for understanding this topic. Again, there is a particular social and historical context in which the womb veil must be placed.

Just as we wouldn't call an article "horse-drawn buggy" and then talk about chariots and Ferraris, "womb veil" is not the place to talk about barrier contraception in ancient Egypt or anywhere else. The article History of barrier contraception for women should be written from scratch, not overwritten on this one. As Kaldari perceptively observed, History of condoms already exists, but not the equivalent for barrier contraception used by women. I would suggest to Zodon that he might better spend his time and considerable energy starting that article.

It's also true that if there'd been an article called "Contraception in the 19th-century United States," "womb veil" could've been a mere section in it. No such article existed. Until it does, womb veil provides some information on the subject. Cynwolfe (talk) 13:27, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Use of the term womb veil prior to 1864
The article suggests that Edward Bliss Foote is responsible for introducing the term "womb veil" (specifically for his rubber pessary). The book Disciplining reproduction, however, suggests that the term may have been used prior to that. What is the earliest use of the term? Does it ever refer to anything other than a rubber pessary? Kaldari (talk) 13:48, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I haven't been able to find any mention of "womb veil" in Google Books prior to 1863. It looks like Foote may have actually first published his description of the device in 1863 rather than 1864, by the way. Kaldari (talk) 13:54, 23 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Good work. This could either be a typo or misreading on my part, or an error in a source, since there were multiple editions of his books. I got the impression that his pamphlets may have preceded the books, but none of these seem to have survived the Comstock confiscations. Cynwolfe (talk) 14:43, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

quote in Efficacy and side effects section
This section quotes Rotter as writing, "In England, however, where such goods are openly advertised and sold, competition tends to secure the survival of the fittest, and hence it is better to import them from country." Is there a word missing in this quote? It seems like it would have been written as "import them from this country" or something similar... --Akhilleus (talk) 18:42, 23 April 2010 (UTC)