Women & Toads

Smiling like the secretive Cheshire cat, the tall, dark and handsome medical director of the American Birth Control League, Dr. Eric M. Matsner, arrived in Manhattan from London last week. In his mind was a new method of rendering women infertile for several weeks at a time. In a box which he carried were 18 South African clawed toads.

The new contraceptive is a synthetic, hormone-like substance to be administered hypodermically. It inhibits the production of ova, without which no woman can conceive. In this respect it differs from spermatoxin, an extract of spermatozoa, which renders a woman transiently infertile when injected into her arm like a vaccine. As long as her blood is stimulated by spermatoxin no spermatozoa can affect her and she cannot have babies. Not all women will endure injections of spermatoxin, because it may render them allergic and put them in a class with victims of hives.

The new drug which Dr. Matsner had in mind has no such effects, said he last week. More than that he could not explain. Reasons: English experimenters'" working with the substance have proved its efficacy on apes, whose reproductive mechanism functions exactly like women's. They are now testing it on humans, want to avoid public discussion until its usefulness is assured.

Although Dr. Matsner thus withheld some information of interest to women, he was frank about the uses of his toads. When away from their native habitat they will not lay eggs naturally. However, if they receive a hypodermic injection of urine from a pregnant woman they invariably produce a few eggs. Non-gravid or male urine fails to affect them. "Therefore," smiled Dr. Matsner, "at 16-c- apiece they are the cheapest, most reliable indicator of pregnancy which we have-- cheaper than rabbits or guinea pigs, which must be killed before they reveal the uncertain woman's condition: more reliable than bitterlings, who project their ovipositors in the presence of any of several hormones" (TIME. Oct. 12).

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