ABSTRACT
Contraceptive drugs are widely used today, but they still present a series of undesired side-effects. Safer contraceptives are becoming increasingly important in countries where there is a growing consciousness of the benefits of family planning, both in individual and social contexts. Natural products as a whole, and medicinal plants in particular, have historically contributed ‘prototype drugs’ (Malone 1983) to the medical sciences. Such drugs have completely different chemical structures to existing agents, and entirely different medical applications. The discovery of each new prototype drug has resulted in major changes in medical practices, and evidence of the interest in plant sources for prototypic contraceptive agents has been provided by a World Health Organization programme devised specifically for this purpose (WHO 1977) and numerous investigations (see Farnsworth et al. 1975 for review).
