Medicine: For Teeming India

India, which has one of the world’s highest fecundity rates, is proving to be a fertile breeding ground for contraceptives. Manhattan’s Dr. Abraham Stone has experimented there with strings of beads to aid illiterate women in following the rhythm method of family planning. Boston’s Dr. Clarence Gamble has suggested a cheap vaginal jelly made by boiling rice flour and adding salt.

Now Calcutta’s Dr. Sudhir Nath Sanyal reports a high degree of success in cutting down the birth rate by using metaxylohydroquinone an extract derived originally from the common Indian garden pea* (Pisum sativum), now synthesized in the laboratory. Taken by mouth, it cut the birth rate among 232 women by about two-thirds over a 15-month period, he reports. Some U.S. researchers scoffed at Dr. Sanyal’s methods and results; others listened with interest because they consider him a careful, conscientious worker. The Indian government rated his findings worth a full-scale trial.

* The ancient Hindu shastras, Dr. Sanyal reports, prescribed a diet of peas for widows to reduce the sex drive. If it failed in this, it might still cut down fertility.