The morning after pill is a female emergency contraceptive used to prevent unwanted pregnancies. It must be taken within a maximum period of 72 hours after risky intercourse and is more than 90% effective in the first 24 hours after sexual intercourse. Over time, this effectiveness begins to decline. And although it has been in the 21st century when it has been commercialized, we would be wrong to think that we are the pioneers.
The silphium , was a wild plant that only grew in the vicinity of the Greek city of Cyrene , in the Mediterranean area of present-day Libya. This plant was so valued that even the city's currency reproduced its image.
According to Pliny the Elder , the plant was wild and impossible to cultivate, with strong and abundant roots and a stem similar to that of the asafetida and of similar thickness. The Latin name of the plant was laserpicium , the laser was extracted from it , which was the aromatic resin that the plant exuded and that had medicinal and culinary properties. But among all the uses that silphium had, the one that concerns us today was that of a contraceptive method, similar to our «morning after pill «, or as an abortifacient, for its estrogenic properties. And to add insult to injury, modern studies with plants closely related to asafoetida show a success rate of nearly 100% efficacy when administered within three days of mating… to rats.
Overexploitation, the small coastal strip where it grew and the impossibility of cultivating it led to its extinction in the 1st century.
A single stalk sent to Nero is all that has been found (in Cyrenaica) in the memory of our generation (...) since then no other laser has been imported than that of Persia, Media and Armenia, where it grows in abundance although much less to that of Cyrenaica and is also adulterated with gum, sacopenium or ground beans… (Naturalis Historia – Pliny the Elder)
Sources:Yale University, The Straight Dope