History's 10 Most Terrifying Contraceptives

The three most terrifying things in the world are werewolves, clowns and unplanned pregnancy. Humanity has known this since time began and as such has endeavored to make sure the last one of these would happen as infrequently as possible.

When you combined extreme motivation, human ingenuity and the fact that most people are stupid, you wound up with contraception methods that will blow your mind. Or at least leave you feeling a little weird down there.

In the Dark Ages in Europe, things were dark for a reason, not the least of which was that, with the lights on, a typical man might wonder why his girlfriend had weasel balls strapped to her leg.

The reason is obvious to anyone with a degree in Magickery or Weasel Ballogy, as any magician at the time would tell you that the weasel balls would prevent pregnancy. Through the power of magick, you see. Yes, being a magician during the Dark Ages pretty much gave you a blank check.

We may not be magicians and our amateur dabbling in gynecology has been less than revealing, but we're pretty sure this method is aces since we don't know many men who would be able to perform sexually after seeing a pair of innocent, severed balls hanging from his mate as decoration.

Ancient Egyptians were a crafty lot, what with those pyramids and that cool dance and mummies and all. It's no surprise then that they were some of the first people to cook up a method of birth control that actually worked. They had figured out that you could stop the pregnancy if you had some kind of, uh, blockage there.

Still, these were ancient times and there was an unspoken agreement that everything they did had to be horrible in some way. Thus, they made their sperm barriers out of honey and crocodile shit. Seriously, look it up. We wouldn't lie to you.

Who exactly was the first to try this, and what their logic was, is lost to history. We know one thing though: When they finally invent a time machine, the first thing we're doing is going back to find out.

In the 16th century, Canadians agreed that the testicles of small furry animals were key to pregnancy prevention. They were far more advanced than those silly, superstitious Europeans, so they got the brilliant idea to use moonshine with beaver testicles in it.

The hooch was incredibly strong and the beaver balls were ground up into a fine powder, all to ensure the rampant Canadian sex would have no unfortunate side effects, other than having to drink grain alcohol with dried balls in it. This was presumably exactly as effective as the aforementioned magic weasel balls, but with the bonus of getting drunk off your ass (it should be noted that most Canadian scientific advancement can be summed up with these same words).

Ah, delicious, hot mercury. From the old days when it was considered a cure for almost everything, to the future when we'll make terminators out of it, mercury never goes out of style.

Several thousand years ago in China, somebody logically came up with the idea of using mercury as birth control. Why not? After sex, women would do some shots of mercury, and we like to think they called it "Riding the Quicksliver Pony," then voila, no pregnancy. There may have been some sterility, brain damage and kidney failure, of course, but stopping the baby was the main thing. This was China, after all.

But, hey, at least they were taking it orally.

Hey! This one doesn't sound so bad! While today's cervical caps are the idiot cousin of the diaphragm and not used all that often, a couple thousand years ago they were the shit. The basic idea was to make a little thimble that fit way up inside a woman over her cervix. While the unwashed masses were busy using oiled paper and beeswax to make these caps, the sluterati were having them made out of gold, silver and ivory.

While these substances were no doubt awesome to anyone going spelunking in a woman's vagina and could give you a cool girl-band name like Ivory Twatter or Silver Coochella, they sometimes lead to things like Toxic Shock Syndrome, unusual odors, discharge and infections, not to mention pregnancy since they only work if properly fitted and have a chance of falling out during sex.

But, hey, if things play out just right, your penis could come out wearing a shiny little top hat! And wouldn't that make it all worth it?