In the early 1950s, Dr. John Billings of Melbourne, Australia, was asked to act as a medical counselor for couples desiring natural methods of family planning. The only natural methods available at that time were the Rhythm Methods and the Basal Body Temperature Method. These two methods were found to be unsafe and inevitably limited when a woman’s cycles were long and irregular. Doctor Billings turned to the medical literature in the hope of finding some method that would lead to the development of a better and more effective natural method. He thus found references dating back to 1855, about the secretion of a mucous flow produced by the cervix of the uterus close to the time of ovulation. The biophysical and chemical properties of this secretion were extensively studied, but there were few references that this secretion was a familiar observation typical of fertile women in good health. He recognized the possible importance of mucous discharge as an indicator of ovulation and wondered whether this secretion could not be used by women as a sign of fertility.
In 1962, Doctor Billings asked Dr. James Brown, a endocrinologist at the University of Melbourne, conducted investigations correlating the accuracy of women’s observations regarding the characteristic pattern of cervical mucosal flow with the typical hormonal characteristics associated with ovulation. Doctor Brown agreed and began a complete program of clinical and laboratory research. Hundreds of cycles of women in all reproductive categories were analyzed. By 1964, researchers were convinced that observations of women regarding the typical characteristics of cervical mucus flow identified their fertility as accurately as laboratory requests requested.
In 1968, the author of this book, Mercedes Arzú de Wilson, learned the Ovulation Method from
Billings doctors. At that time the calculations of rhythm and temperature today known as the Sympto-Thermal Method were included. But it had started with investigations into the effectiveness of natural signals of cervical mucous flow that appear during the fertile phase. Mrs. Wilson began teaching low-income and illiterate couples in Guatemala,
experimenting for the first time only with the signs of cervical mucosal flow through a graph with colored stamps.
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Research
The late Dr. James Brown worked since 1947 on the application of hormone assays in the identification of the phases of fertility and infertility during the menstrual cycle in Auckland, New Zealand; in Edinburgh, Scotland (1949-1962) and in Melbourne, Australia (1962-2009).
In Edinburgh he was involved in the development of the first accurate hormone assays for estrogens, pregnanediol and total gonadotrophins in urine, and later, in Melbourne, refined the assays for estrogens and pregnanediol for rapid and mass application. During the 1960s, Dr. Brown used these assays in helping Drs. John and Lyn Billings develop and validate the Ovulation Method.
Dr. Brown performed 750,000 hormonal correlations that confirmed that the simple observations of the signs that the woman observes during the fertile phase coincide with the hormonal correlations performed in the laboratory.
Further extensive information can be found in the book “Love and Fertility”.
THE OVULATION METHOD
Choosing the natural
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