ABSTRACT
The introduction notes that the quest to understand and/or cure infertility has existed, across cultures, for centuries. However, although people lamented infertility for centuries – and there were many rituals, practices and prayers to gods of fertility aimed to increase the chances of becoming pregnant – little was understood about how conception and reproduction occurred. Little progress was made in finding a ‘cure’ until the latter part of the seventeenth century, when Dutch scientist Antonie van Leeuwenhoek was able to observe spermatozoa for the first time under a microscope. Leeuwenhoek’s groundbreaking observations in 1677 were followed by further experimentation and speculation about human reproduction, signaling a significant development in both understanding infertility and creating technologies that could assist conception.
