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1930s: In her dispensary in rural India, Dr Martha Voegeli was concerned for the poor families she had volunteered to help. Many did not have enough to eat, yet kept having more children.

She reasoned it would help if she could provide these families with a simple and inexpensive method of contraception, so they could space births.

With her three medical degrees (University of Paris, University of Berlin, Columbia University) she had heard that testes are outside the body because sperm production requires a lower temperature.

So she coached men to crouch over a bucket of warm water, and eventually determined that 45 minutes at 47ºC (115ºF), daily for 3 weeks, brought sterility lasting around 6 months. Success! During the 1930s and 1940s, hundreds of families delayed new babies until they could afford them, and expressed their gratitude to her. Read about it here: link.

After this success, in the 1950s and early 1960s Dr Voegeli wrote many letters to researchers and governments, telling them about her results, hoping they would continue her work and offer it to the whole world. An archive of her letters is here: link.

But they didn't...