omn-and, more importantly, the Great Convention-established the Impenum, however that custom was slowly changed Smaller families with two to four children became more the norm among the Houses Major, the Houses Minor and others occupying lower stations in the faufre luches behaved m the us,ual fashion, aping the habits of their supenors By 980 the earliest Imperial publications on the subject of birth control had been published and re search in this area was advancing rapidly After 6795, there is little to indicate that any further work in the field, aside from the inevitable minute refinements was done (One notable exception which will be discussed later, took place in the 7200s on Arrakis ) Contraceptive methods had been reduced to an extremely reliable few and were in use on every world in the Impenum Most popular was the scrota! implant This technique, which involved the insertion of a pellet weighing approximately one tenth of a gram on the underside of the scrotum!, ensured CONTRACEPTION 166 CONTRACEPTION timed release of Siranil into the surrounding tissues for a period of six months The drug, which was a specific against active sperma tozoa completely dissipated at the end of that time restoring the user s fertilitj It exhibited no harmful side effects and could, if desired, be used throughout a man s fertile years There were some men, of course, who considered the implant unsatisfactory The Comno Emperors, high ranking officers in the Imperial Sardaukar, and the heads of most of the Great Houses were among them It was far more the rule than the exception for these men to maintain a wife and one or more concubines-the Royal Harem being the most obvious example-and while they might choose not to impregnate a certain woman at any one time, the idea that they could impregnate no woman lacked appeal The practice in such families then was for the woman to use a contraceptive thug (usually ingested m one form or another) as effective, if not as long-lasting, as Strand Estrekan and Dalavix were among the most popular Exceptions to this drug use were those women who had received traiamg with the Bene Gessent The Sisterhood taught its members to maintain and adjust many of the internal balances of their bodies, and one of the skills a B G commanded was the ability to regulate the pH balance of her uterus From the point at which ovuktion took place until the beginning of her menstrual flow, a woman who did not wish to conceive simply made her womb an inhospitable environment (It was a similar but more delicate process which allowed die B G to choose the gender of the t'erus by allowing only the desired type of spenn to teach die Fallopian tubes ) Yet another method was introduced m the 7200s by the Frernen of Arrakis From their earliest years on the desert planet, the Piemen had known that addiction to melange was unavoidable and that interaction between the spice and almost any other type of drug ranged from dangerous to deadly It was obvious mat die common drugs m use in the rest of the Impemim could not be used by Fremen, nor was it desirable to go to the Bene Gessent' witches" for help The Fremen doctors studied the problem carefully consul enng it in light of their people s unique requirements, and arrived at an elegant solution Patterning their method after a sexual tech mquc mentioned m some of their earliest historical records, the Fremen learned to separate the male orgasm from ejaculation At the time they reached puberty boys were given detailed instruction on the technique and were not considered to have entered into true adulthood before mastering jt, whatever dieir olher dctumplishments A young man who proved incapable of learning such con trol was seen as a danger not only to himself (since unnecessary ejaculations were a waste of precious water) but to his partners Be cause the late stages of pregnancy could slow a woman down and sometimes make it dangerous for her to tra\el no Fremen worn an would endanger herself and her troop by running a constant risk of unwanted impreg nation an uncontrolled male was generally a celibate While abortifacients were available, thetr use was unpopular and they were illegal on a number of worlds This revulsion for contra ception after the-fact also had its roots in the period of the Butlerian Jihad and it was far stronger than the distaste for contraceptive techniques had ever been In part because of this hatred, and in part because of the near absolute effectiveness of the available con traceptives, abortion inducing drugs were manufactured and used primarily as weapons of intrigue (How much easier to eliminate a nval's heir before its birth1) Giedi Prime, homeworld of House Harkonnen, was the source of more than eighty percent of the abortifacients produced from 3005 10193 this unpopular specialization invited harsh cnti cism from the rest of the Great Houses and especially from the Bene Gessent, who saw the existence of any such drugs as an im plied threat to then1 breeding plan (That abhorrence only applied to their existence in the hands of those outside the control of the Sisterhood, it should be noted The B G were not above employing so distasteful a method in their own service ) During the millennia of Leto II s reign knowledge concerning birth control was discarded along with much of the rest of the 167 Impermm s advanced technology and it was not until the periods known as the Starvation and the Scattering that sophisticated methods were discovered CW Further references BUTLEKIAN JIHAD ATREIDES CHANI FREMEN MENSTRUATION MOHIAM REVEREND MOTHER GAIUS HELEN ATREIDES CORRINO PRINCESS IRULAN R Semajo Ritual and Fertility Sofia 420 61 68 E K i>entenag Surgical Techniques of the Last Mi leraiium Antares People s College of Medicine) Ruuvars Shaigal ed Fundamentals of the Way A Bene Gessent Menial Exercise Book (Orumman Lodni) CORRIDA.