Anyway, I believe in leaving people better than I found them, and my lawyer says my posts should be an educational experience, so here's a copypasta about what's apparently the best invention ever.
Code:Technically, the condom is a sheath designed to cover the
penis and catch the ejaculate. Condoms are different from
penis protectors designed to protect the penis from insect
bites or as badges of rank or status, decoration, modesty, or
a variety of other purposes. It is, however, possible that the
sheath or condom might have evolved from these. The first
use of the term in print is by John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester,
who in 1665 wrote A Panegyric Upon the Condom.
The earliest use of a product to catch the ejaculate is much
older. It occurs in a tale told by Antoninus Liberalis, a sec-
ond-century compiler of Greek mythology who told of the
legendary Minos and Pasiphae. According to legend, the se-
men of King Minos contained serpents and scorpions, and his
ejaculate injured all the women who had cohabited with him.
To solve the problem, he was advised to slip the bladder of a
goat either over his penis or into the vagina of a woman and
this would catch all the stored-up serpent-bearing demons
when he had sex with her, after which his semen, at least for
a brief period, would be normal. In any case, he impregnated
Pasiphae successfully, not just once but eight times, resulting
in the birth of four sons and four daughters.
As far as I know, there is no other mention of a condom in
classical literature. Its mention by Antoninus, however, would
indicate that animal bladders or perhaps animal ceca (in-
testines) were at least occasionally used by either men or
women. The difficulty with the use of either is holding it on
the penis, or, in case of a vaginal insert, keeping it in place.
Ribbons were often put around the top and tied to the body.
Another difficulty is that bladders or ceca also deadened the
sensitivity so that, if the man used it for contraception rather
than for prophylactic reasons, it was more likely to be a tight-
fitting cap rather than a full sheath.
The earliest known medical description of a device similar
to that used by Minos is by the Italian anatomist Fallopius
(1564), but, again, since his mention is rather casual, it gives
strength to the idea of a continuing tradition of such devices.
He wrote:
As often as man has intercourse, he should (if
possible) wash the genitals, or wipe them with
a cloth; afterward he should use a small linen
cloth made to fit the glans, and draw forward the
prepuce over the glans; if he can do it so, it is well
to moisten it with salve or with a lotion. However,
it does not matter; if you fear lest caries [syphilis]
be produced in the midst of the canal [vagina], take
the sheath of linen cloth and place it in the canal. I
tried the experiment on eleven hundred men, and
I call immortal God to witness that none of them
was infected. [Fallopius, 1564, trans. Himes, 1970]
At the end of the sixteenth century, the medical writer Her-
cules Saxonia described a prophylactic sheath made of linen
soaked in a solution several times and then put out to dry.
From that time on, there are a growing number of references
to a penis sheath. Casimir Freschot described one made of an
animal bladder that covered the whole length of the penis and
was tied on by a ribbon. One physician reported that many a
libertine would rather risk getting the “clap” than use such
devices.
In the eighteenth century, White Kennet wrote a burlesqued
poem about the condom:
Happy the Man, who in his Pocket keeps,
Whether with Green or Scarlet Ribband bound
A well made C_____. He, nor dreads the ills
Of shanker or Cordee or Buboes Dire
With C_____ arm’d he wages am ‘rous Fight
The Condom
Vern Bullough
292 EVERYTHING YOU KNOW ABOUT SEX IS WRONG
Fearless, secure; nor Thought of future Pains
Resembling Pricks of Pin and Needle’s Point
E’er checks his Raptures, or disturbs his Joys
[Fryer, 1964, pp. 27-8]
The very crudest of animal condoms were made from unpro-
cessed skins sewn or pasted together to form a sheath. They
were both unreliable and unaesthetic. The best condoms
from animal ceca were produced by a lengthy and somewhat
expensive process that was described in Gray’s Supplement
to the Pharmacopoeia, published in 1828, but the method
must have been the same earlier. Gray said the intestines
of sheep should be soaked in water for several hours, then
turned inside out, macerated again in a weak alkaline solution
that was changed every twelve hours, then scraped carefully,
leaving only the peritoneal and muscular coats. Next, they
were exposed to vapor of burning brimstone and washed in
soap and water, after which they were blown up to see if they
could hold air. If they passed inspection, they were dried, cut
to seven or eight inches, tied or sealed at one end, and bor-
dered at the open end with a ribbon.
Baudrouches were made the same way but were distin-
guished from ordinary condoms by undergoing further pro-
cessing. This entailed drawing them smoothly and carefully
onto oiled molds of appropriate size, where they were rubbed
with brimstone to make them thinner. Superfi ne baudrouches
were scented with essences, stretched on a glass mold, and
rubbed with a heavy glass rod to further process them.
There are actually some surviving condoms manufactured be-
tween 1790 and 1810, which were found in 1953 preserved
in a book in an English country manor.
Probably because prostitutes were often regarded as carri-
ers of disease, many of the surviving references to condoms
come from the literature of prostitution. Houses of prostitu-
tion are known to have displayed a variety of condoms in the
eighteenth century, but they also recommended the use of
sponges. Sponges did not protect the customer from disease
but did have some contraceptive value, and this might indi-
cate that condoms were sometimes also used as contracep-
tives, as well as prophylactics.
A good description of condoms appears in the writing of the
eighteenth-century Frenchman Jean Astruc, who was de-
termined to prove that syphilis originated in America, not in
France:
I heard from the lowest debauchees who chase
without restraint after the love of prostitutes, that
there are recently employed in England skins made
from soft and seamless hides in the shape of a
sheath, and called condoms in English, with which
those about to have intercourse wrap their penis
as in a coat of mail in order to render themselves
safe in the dangers of an ever doubtful battle. They
claim, I suppose, that thus mailed and with spears
sheathed in this way, they can undergo with
impunity the chances of promiscuous intercourse.
But (in truth) they are greatly mistaken. [Astruc,
Book ii, Chap. I, p 2]
Giovanni Giacomo Casanova de Seingalt’s (1725-1799) erotic
memoirs list 116 lovers by name, although they leave name-
less hundreds more women and girls he had sex with, ranging
in age from nine to seventy and in occupation and social sta-
tus from chambermaids to noble women. He reported having
intercourse standing, sitting, and lying down in coaches, on
boats, in beds, and even in alleys. He also said he knew of
and used condoms. Sometimes he called them the “English
riding coat,” but he also referred to them as “preservative”
sheaths and “assurance” caps. Casanova de-
scribes an “English overcoat” as being made
of “very fi ne and transparent skin,” eight inch-
es long and closed at one end, with a narrow
pink ribbon slotted through the “open end” (with which to
hold it up or tie it). He apparently used his sheaths not only
for prophylactic purposes but to prevent his partners from
becoming pregnant. He blew them up like balloons to pre-
test them. Some were of better quality than others, since he
reported that some broke. Some were made of animal ceca,
a practice he once mentioned as “suiting” himself up with a
piece of dead skin.
It was a common practice to use condoms over and over
again, washing them out after each use. The most expensive
of condoms were those known as goldbeaters’ skins. They
got their name from the practice of beating gold into foil or
leaf. Such sheaths were carefully processed by beating them
until they were elasticized. Madame de Sévigny, writing about
contraception in a 1617 letter to her daughter, described such
condoms as “armor against enjoyment and a spider web
against danger.” Some condoms were made of silk that was
cut, sewn, then oiled. Condoms made of bladder were adver-
tised in eighteenth-century England. The bladders might well
be those of the blowfi sh common in the Rhine River, which
were being described as early as 1788.
Condoms undoubtedly existed in eighteenth-century Ameri-
ca, but so far no historical record of them has been uncovered.
It is believed that colonists probably fashioned their own con-
Some condoms were made of silk
that was cut, sewn, then oiled.
THE CONDOM 293
doms for personal use based on English models. It was not
until 1844 that one advice book, The United States Practical
Receipt Book; Or, Complete Book of Reference, gave a de-
tailed description of how to make a condom from the cecum
of a sheep. The description was probably based on a standard
recipe for homemade condoms mentioned above.
In the first part of the nineteenth century, condoms began to
be advertised in some newspapers and other printed material
as a preventative against syphilis, and the sellers said they
would ship them anywhere in the country. Packages of fish
bladder “membraneous envelopes” were sold at $5 a dozen
in New York City in 1860. This price would have prevented all
but the extremely well-to-do from using such condoms; in-
stead, most used the much cheaper animal ones and washed
them repeatedly.
The cost, availability, and material of condoms slowly changed
with the vulcanization of rubber by Charles Goodyear and
Thomas Hancock in 1843-44. The key development for con-
doms, however, was the 1853 discovery of liquid latex, which
led to the development of thinner and finer condoms. The
first latex condom was really a cap designed to cover the
glans, not the entire penis. It was described as being made
of a “delicate texture” rubber no thicker than the cuticle and
shaped and bound at the open end with an India rubber ring.
The cap was soon extended to a sheath, and there is a de-
scription of a full-length one in 1869 as being effective in
preventing conception even though it dulled sensation and
irritated the vagina.
These early rubber condoms were molded from sheet crepe
and carried a seam along their entire length. Making the latex
condoms more effective and useful depended upon further
development in rubber technology, and the major innovation
was the seamless cement process, so named because the
process was similar to that used in producing rubber cement.
Natural rubber was ground up, dissolved, then heated with a
solvent in which cylindrical glass molds were dipped. As the
solvent evaporated, the condom dried. They were then vul-
canized by being exposed to sulfur dioxide. These new types
of condom were on the market before 1889. The major dif-
ficulty was that the finished product had a very short shelf life
and had to be used within a comparatively short time of its
manufacture. The advantage was that these new condoms
were fairly inexpensive and easily disposable. By the 1870s
wholesale druggists were selling rubber, skin, and imported
condoms at six to sixteen cents each, and in retail outlets or
from peddlers they were from $1 to $4 a dozen.
Condoms, as they became more available and trustworthy,
were increasingly being used as a means of family planning.
Still, only eight of the forty-five women who filled out a sex
questionnaire (designed by Clelia Mosher and used over a
thirty-year period up to 1920) reported that their husbands
had used condoms as part of a means of preventing preg-
nancy. The ambiguity that some women felt about using con-
doms was expressed in a letter in 1878 that an Idaho woman,
Mary Hallock Foote, wrote to a friend in New York to tell her
how she and her husband planned to use a condom to avoid
another pregnancy so soon after her current one. She report-
ed that she had learned about condoms from a friend, Mrs.
Hague, who told her to have her husband go to a physician
and get shields of some kind:
They are to be had also at some druggists. It sounds
perfectly revolting, but one must face anything
rather than the inevitable result of Nature’s
methods. At all events there is nothing injurious
about this. Mrs. Hague is a very fastidious woman
and I hardly think she would submit to anything
very bad... [Quoted by Brodie, 1994, p 206]
Availability, however, did not mean widespread usage, and
because condoms could not be sold for contraceptive use
in many parts of the United States because of state laws
copying the federal Comstock Act, they had to be sold as
prophylactics. In other countries, however, they were sold as
contraceptives as well, and distributed widely, even through
dispensing machines. Distribution in the United States was
primarily through drugstores and barbershops, but they were
also sold by traveling salesmen who visited industrial plants
and businesses employing large numbers of men.
By 1890 packages of condoms were available at fifty cents
a dozen. The main problem, however, with all contraceptive
material in the United States was lack of quality control. There
was neither patent nor copyright protection for the manufac-
turer. None of the major rubber manufacturers, at least as
indicated by the archives at the University of Akron (now Kent
State University), manufactured them, and this meant that
the market was left to a number of smaller companies, some
of them with a very tenuous financial base. Eventually, several
companies emerged with adequate quality control, including
Young’s Rubber, Julius Schmid, and Akwell. The entrance of
Young’s Rubber, founded by Merle Young (a drugstore-prod-
ucts salesman) in the mid-1920s, was particularly important
because of his emphasis on quality control. Young’s Rubber
also began a series of court suits that eventually overturned
many of the state laws against condom sales.
In the 1930s, new techniques were developed that enabled
rubber plantations to ship concentrated liquid natural rub-
ber latex directly to the manufacturer, and this eliminated
the need to grind and dissolve rubber back to a liquid state.
Though this proved to be a less costly method of manufac-
294 EVERYTHING YOU KNOW ABOUT SEX IS WRONG
ture, the problem of quality control remained. In one of the
fi rst American surveys of the effi cacy of condoms, that of
the National Committee on Maternal Health in 1938, it was
found that only about 40% of the rubber condoms sold in the
United States were fi t for use.
One result of such a fi nding was a government decision to
assign the US Food and Drug Administration control over the
quality of condoms sold or shipped in interstate commerce.
This marked an abrupt change in federal policy, which went
from trying to outlaw contraceptive information, and when
this was no longer possible, to ignoring the existence of such
things as condoms, and was now recognizing condoms as an
important consumer product.
The fi rst governmental effort to look at quality control found
that as much as 75% of the condoms on the market had
small pinholes caused either by the existence of dust par-
ticles in the liquid latex or by improperly vulcanized latex.
This situation changed rapidly. By the 1960s, condoms were
among the most effective contraceptives on the market and
were probably the best prophylactic for use against sexually
transmitted diseases. They were simple to use, easy to buy,
inexpensive, and did not require a physical examination or a
physician’s advice. Because they simply served as a contain-
er for the semen and did not interfere with any of the bodily
processes, they were also harmless.
The use of condoms declined after the 1960s because of the
development of oral contraceptives, IUDs, and other forms of
contraception, the use of which was controlled by women,
but condom use increased in the 1980s with the appearance
of acquired immunodefi ciency syndrome (AIDS) and the rec-
ognition that condoms, used in either vaginal or anal sex, were
effective in decreasing the chance of infection. The variety of
condoms also increased. Originally, all condoms came in one
size, and the assumption of one-size-fi ts-all was challenged
only when the United States began exporting condoms to
Asian countries and found that they were too large for many
Asian men. Investigation in Thailand, for example, found that
the median erect penis length of Thai men was between 126
mm and 150 mm (approximately 5 to 6 inches) whereas that
of US men was between 151 mm and 175 mm (approximately
6 to 7 inches). The median erect penis circumference of Thai
men was between 101 mm and 112 mm (4 to 4.5 inches),
while that of the US measured between 113 and 137 mm (4.5
to 5 inches). This implied that there was also a large variation
in the United States, and most large international manufactur-
ers began producing at least two basic sizes, Class I (180 mm
in length and 52 mm in width) and Class II (160 mm in length
and 49 mm in width). Many manufacturers, fearful of saying
their condoms were smaller than others, advertised them as
having a snugger fi t. Rubber membranes could also be made
thinner, and better testing procedures developed.
As the use of condoms grew, numerous varieties were de-
veloped: contoured, textured, ribbed, with a variety of col-
ors and other descriptors such as extra thin, extra strong, or
lubricated with spermicides. New designs were developed,
as well. The Rumdum Sicher covers both the penis and the
testicles and is designed for male-to-male sex. It features a
latex band that acts as a “cock ring” to help maintain erec-
tion. Manufacturers also began to include better instructions
for condom use, and these vary somewhat since those for
circumcised men are different than those for uncircumcised
ones. Instructions are also given for removal so that sperm
do not escape.
Why a condom has been called a condom has been a subject
of much debate, with the origin of the word being attributed
to several mythical physicians, as well as an actual French vil-
lage named Condom. The latter seems more a coincidence,
although in 1999 this village began to hold an annual condom
festival, seeking to attract tourists. If the term was not entire-
ly made up by Lord Rochester, it might have been modifi ed
from the Latin cunnus (the female genitals) and dum, imply-
ing an ability to function. There is, however, a continuing and
inconclusive debate on the topic.
References
Antoninus Liberalis, “The Fox,” Chap. XLI in Metamorphoses, edited by
Edgar Martin. Leipzig: Teubner, 1896. § Astruc, Jean. A Treatise of Veneral
Disease in Nine Books. No translator listed. London: W. Innys, et al.,
1754, iii, Chap 1, 2. § Brodie, Janet Farrell. Contraception and Abortion in
Nineteenth Century America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994. §
Bullough, Vern L. “A Brief Note on Rubber Technology and Contraception:
The Diaphragm and the Condom.” Technology and Culture, 22 (Jan 1981):
104-11. § Bullough, Vern L. “Condom.” Encyclopedia of Birth Control.
Edited by Vern L. Bullough. Santa Barbara: ABC Clio, 2000. § Bullough,
Vern L., and Bonnie Bullough. Contraception. Amherst, NY: Prometheus
Books, 1997. § Casanova, Jacques. The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova
de Seingalt. Translated by Arthur Machen. New York: A.C. Boni, 1932.
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1995): 322-4; 61 (Jan 1996): 6-8. § Fallopius, Gabriele. De morbo Gallico
liber absolutismsus. Pavia: 1564, Chap 89, p 52. § Finch, Bernard Ephraim,
and Hugh Green. Contraception Through the Ages. Springfi eld, Il: Charles
C. Thomas, 1963. § Foote, Edward Bliss. Medical Common Sense. New
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Warburg, 1964. § Grady, W.R., et al., Contraceptive Failure and Continuation
Among Married Women in the United States, 1970-1976. Working Paper No. 6.
Hyattsville, MD: National Center of Health Statistics, 1981. § Gray, S.F.A.
Supplement to the Pharmacopoeia. 4 th ed., London: n.p., 1928. § Himes,
Norman. Medical History of Contraception. New York: Schocken Books,
1970. § Kestleman, P., and J. Trussel. “Effi cacy of the Simultaneous Use
of Condoms and Spermicides.” Family Planning Perspectives 23.5 (1991):
226-7, 232. § Redford, Myron H., Gordon W. Duncan, and Dennis J. Prager.
The Condom: Increasing Utilization in the United States. San Francisco: San
Francisco Press, 1974. § “Update on Condoms – Products, Protection,
Promotion.” Population Reports, ser H., no. 6 (Sep-Oct 1982), vol. 10, no.
5. § W.A. Week and Company. Illustrated Year Book. Chicago: n.p., 1872.