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Leslie J. Reagan and John M. Riddle are historians well versed in medical matters. Although their books cover familiar ground, each presents a wealth of useful information -- Reagan on abortion performed on women, Riddle on herbal abortion agents used by women. Both books are well worth the reader's time and money. \"When Abortion Was a Crime\" is a first-rate exposition of the changing cultural and legal climate regarding abortion in America from about the end of the Civil War, when the law ignored abortion before quickening (occurring usually during the fourth month of pregnancy), until Roe v. Wade, when it legalized the procedure during the first trimester. Reagan, an assistant professor of history, medicine and women's studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, reminds us that, until the middle of the last century, the Catholic Church did not condemn abortion \"prior to ensoulment,\" believed to occur at the time of quickening; and ancient rabbinic teaching, viewing the mother's life as taking precedence over that of the unborn child, \"required abortion when childbirth threatened a woman's life.\" \"Eve's Herbs\" is a highly informative presentation of the history of the use of plant products, such as ergot, as abortion agents.

Another ancient contraceptive was pennyroyal, mentioned in Aristophanes's comedy \"Peace,\" written in 421 B.C. In the play, a man is worried that his female companion might become pregnant. Hermes tells him that he need not be if he adds \"a dose of pennyroyal.\" Pennyroyal, Dr. [John M. Riddle] said, is now known to contain pulegone, a chemical that terminates pregnancies. Although many of the ancient remedies have not been tested by modern methods, Dr. Riddle said he was convinced that many were effective. \"Women had control over their reproduction,\" Dr. Riddle said. \"It was their decision.\" If a woman took a contraceptive and it did not work, \"she'd move on\" and take an abortifacient, Dr. Riddle said. And if that did not work, she would try another. Co-Author Is Uncertain The fact is, \"we don't know what was available to women,\" Dr. [Monica Green] said. \"Women don't get documented. Women's opinions don't get documented. And women's practices don't get documented.\"

Women in ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome married shortly after they were physically able to become pregnant and in theory spent 20 to 30 years of their lives vulnerable to pregnancy after pregnancy. Yet, [John M. Riddle] said in an interview, \"we know that for long periods they did not have enough children for the population to increase and, in fact, there were periods when the population decreased.\" High infant mortality rates and battlefield deaths have been offered as explanations. But Riddle pointed out that the population decreases \"tend to occur in times of prosperity and stability.\" For example, he said, \"in the Roman Empire, during the longest period of lasting peace, there was a great deal of difficulty with population decreases.\" Historians have deduced that ancient populations used a variety of methods to limit populations, including infanticide, physical separation of men and women, and the encouragement of practices that would not lead to pregnancies, like anal sex and homosexuality. Another ancient contraceptive was pennyroyal, mentioned in Aristophanes' comedy Peace, written in 421 B.C. In the play, a man is worried that his female companion might become pregnant. Hermes tells him that he need not be if he adds \"a dose of pennyroyal.\" Pennyroyal, Riddle said, is now known to contain pulegone, a chemical that terminates pregnancies. \"Women had control over their reproduction,\" Riddle said. \"It was their decision.\" Others are not so sure. Dr. J. Worth Estes, a professor of pharmacology and a historian of science at the Boston University School of Medicine, was asked by Riddle to help evaluate the science behind the ancient medicines. He and Dr. Josiah C. Russell, a professor emeritus of medieval history at the University of New Mexico, are co-authors with Riddle of the Archeology paper, but do not share all Riddle's conclusions. \"We agreed to disagree,\" ' Estes said. \"Do I believe in these things? There are the observations and they are tantalizing.\" But, he added, \"I sit here as a professor of pharmacology teaching about modern drugs to medical students.\" When we ask about the effectiveness of folk medicines, \"we should apply the same standards,\" he said.

  She is survived by her husband, Rodney Winslow Sr. of Roxbury; her daughter, Esther Riddle Winslow of Augusta; her son, John Matthew Riddle of Leesburg, Fla.; her stepsons, Jeffrey Winslow of Sparks, Nev., and Paul Winslow of Portland; her stepdaughter, Tiffany McNeil of Musquodoboit Harbour, Nova Scotia; and six grandchildren...

In fact, according to John M. Riddle, a historian of medicine at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, who unearthed the tradition, evidence is accumulating not only that the venerable methods do work in animal tests, but that the knowledge, use and social acceptance of effective, plant-derived birth-control drugs was widespread in the ancient world. Riddle recently published his findings in a book, \"Contraception and Abortion from the Ancient World to the Renaissance.\" According to Riddle, herbal birth control created much of the wealth of the Greek city-state of Cyrene on the coast of what is now Libya. Cyrenians collected and exported the sap of a plant that the Greeks called silphion and the Romans silphium. An image of the plant appears on 5th century B.C. Cyrenian coins. Even foods in an ordinary diet can have contraceptive effects, [Norman R. Farnsworth] found _ peas, for example. The clue emerged from the fact that in the history of Tibet the population has been stable for periods of up to 200 years. During those times Tibetans subsisted largely on barley and peas. When mice were fed a diet of 20 percent peas, litter sizes dropped in half. At 30 percent peas, the mice failed to reproduce at all.

Vern L. Bullough reviews \"Dioscorides on Pharmacy and Medicine,\" by John M. Riddle with a foreword by John Scarborough.

Bibel reviews \"Eve's Herbs: A History of Contraception and Abortion in the West\" by John M. Riddle.

  \"He's led by example,\" said Bill Ward, director of the Community Foundation, a division of United Way. \"He'll make a great addition to the group, and we look forward to him joining the committee (of previous honorees) next year.\" \"We had similar career paths except for that education thing,\" [Glenn Ritchey] said. \"We both married up. He would have been a hell of a car salesman.\" \"My dad taught me to really listen.\" said his oldest son Michael. \"You have been a remarkable role model all my life and I'm very proud.\"

John Martin Fischer has recently proposed that actions and omissions are asymmetric with respect to the requirement of alternative possibilities for moral responsibility: whereas moral responsibility for an action does not require freedom to refrain from performing the action, moral responsibility for failure to perform an action does require freedom to perform the action. In what follows, I first critically assess Fischer's asymmetry principle. In arguing against the principle, I raise some concerns about Fischer's association of responsibility with control. I then motivate a riddle regarding omissions: some cases appear to show that a person is not responsible for failing to bring about something in virtue of the fact that the person could not bring about that thing. Other cases, though, seemingly show that a person is responsible for failing to bring about something even though the person could not bring about that thing. What explains the asymmetry in responsibility attributions in these cases involving omissions? Third, I consider some answers to this riddle and explain why they are inadequate. Finally, I sketch my own answer.