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The elephant dung was no trouble at all. When the circus came to town, Percy Skuy simply showed up with a bucket and politely asked the keeper if he could collect a few droppings.

The mule's earwax? Now, that was a challenge. Skuy asked a friend in Mexico for advice. A few weeks later, the friend sent back photos of two ranch hands struggling to hold a mule while a third extracted a clot of wax from a hairy ear.

Skuy set the greasy blob on black velvet, near the vial of elephant dung.

Another exhibit successfully mounted in the History of Contraception Museum.

In a 40-year quest to document the science — and superstition — of family planning through the ages, Skuy has sought out weasel testicles and hairy spiders, carrot seeds, candy wrappers and a bone from an all-black cat. He has collected hundreds of IUDs and cervical caps. He has preserved the first, experimental female condoms and the short-lived "cerviscope" of the 1960s, an awkward device designed to help women monitor their fertility.

The story starts in 1550 BC, with a prescription written on papyrus: "To cause that a woman should cease to conceive," moisten a bit of wool lint with honey, mix in ground dates and the tips of acacia flowers and use the sticky wad as a vaginal suppository. Like many ancient methods, this one might actually have worked: Acacia breaks down to lactic acid, a spermicide used even today.

The animal dung women used as suppositories in ancient India may have been effective too: Some manure is acidic enough to kill sperm. But the earwax amulets popular in the Middle Ages? Not a chance. Still, Skuy cautions against ridiculing such folklore.

"Men today spend an inordinate amount of money on rhinoceros horns and elk antlers as aphrodisiacs," he points out. "If people can do that in the 21st century, it's easy to understand these old superstitions."

And not all was superstition. Hundreds of years before scientists understood reproduction — sperm was not observed under a microscope until 1677 — men and women invented birth control strikingly similar to modern contraceptives.

The museum documents the use of cervical caps made of lemon halves, natural sea sponges dipped in olive oil, and condoms fashioned from sheep intestine. It explores approaches to oral contraception long before the pill: Women in China 4,000 years ago drank mercury, which probably did sterilize them if it didn't kill them. In 17th century India, women munched carrot seeds as a post-coital contraceptive. In parts of Canada, even today, some women steep dried beaver testicles in alcohol, then drink the potion.

Skuy scanned medical journals and newspapers for reports about curious attempts at contraception, such as the Australian boys who used candy wrappers as condoms or the British woman who used the top of a teapot as a diaphragm.

When traveling, he made a point of asking local guides about their customs.

"I would move from 'Show us the local temple,' to 'Let's go look for a family planning clinic,' " he said. "It was a priority."

Once, in India, a guide showed him a neem tree, renowned for its medicinal properties. Skuy remembered reading that Indian women used to steep branches from the tree in a special "fumigation" kettle, then stand over the steam after intercourse, hoping that would prevent pregnancy. He snipped off a few branches for his museum. His wife, a professional potter, made a ceramic replica of a fumigation kettle for the display.

As his collection grew, Skuy took it to medical conventions across Europe and Asia. Participants often tipped him off to colleagues who collected interesting devices — which is how Skuy ended up in an Israeli gynecologist's office, bartering several duplicates from his collection for three crude homemade metal IUDs she had removed from Russian patients.

"They were trading, like you might trade hockey cards!" Elsa recalled.

Other finds were pure serendipity.

One day in the 1980s, a woman came to Skuy's office to offer him a link from her charm bracelet.

It was a small gold wishbone. She had come across it in her husband's pharmacy, and finding the shape fanciful, had hooked it on her bracelet. There it remained for two decades — until she saw a newspaper photo of Skuy's collection and realized that her beloved charm was an old-time cervical plug.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationw...0dec30,0,5775537.story?coll=la-home-headlines

My old anatomy/physiology prof once had a story of a woman from the South who complained to her doctor that a leaf was growing out of her vagina. Well, it turned out that she stuffed a sweet potato up her uterus (iirc). It rotted and she had to have a hysterectomy.