#Rubber #Innovations & Inventions #Product history #Medical technology 21.02.2017

A brief journey through the history of the condom

  • Paintings dating from around 12,000 BC in the Les Combarelles cave, in the Dordogne department of France, depict the use of a penis sheath.
  • On an Egyptian statuette dating from around 4000 BC, the male genitals are surrounded by a sheath, called a ‘karnata’, which was presumably not intended for contraception but rather to protect against injuries in battle and insect bites. Native American and African cultures used similar condoms to protect against leeches and parasites transmitted by fish – or as ornaments to adorn the genitals.
  • Minos, the legendary King of Crete, son of Zeus, father of the gods, and Europa, is said to have used goat bladders as condoms around 1500 BC. Curiously, the aim was to bring about pregnancy rather than prevent it. According to mythology, Minos’s ejaculate contained poisonous scorpions, snakes and centipedes, so that all the women with whom he had sexual relations died. A spell cast upon him by his immortal – and immortally jealous – wife, Pasiphae. To enable Minos to father children with Pasiphae, Prokris, the Attic king’s daughter, advised him to use a goat’s bladder inserted into the vagina. This caught the deadly ejaculate; the subsequent intercourse was then safe and ultimately led to Pasiphae’s long-awaited pregnancy. Strictly speaking, therefore, not a condom, but an early form of pessary (or a female condom). All this, at any rate, was recounted by the Greek poet Antoninus Liberalis in his tale ‘The Fox of Procris’, the final chapter of his ‘Metamorphoses’ (150 AD).
  • Condoms were also known in ancient Japan (1000 BC). These condoms, known as ‘kabutogata’, were usually made from tortoiseshell – that is, the dried horn plates from the carapace of hawksbill turtles.
  • Ancient Indian Sanskrit sources make no mention of condoms, nor does the ‘Kama Sutra’ (200–300 AD); however, it does mention a kind of supportive sheath intended to help restore lost virility. If it had no holes, the aspect of contraception theoretically came into play as well.
  • There is no mention of condoms in early medieval texts; instead, chastity is preached.
  • Following Columbus’s discovery of the Americas in 1492, Spanish sailors brought syphilis to Europe; it was later, tellingly, referred to as the ‘gift of the New World’ and the ‘revenge of the Indians’. Spanish mercenaries in the service of the French army took part in the conquest of the Kingdom of Naples in 1495 – and spread syphilis there. Consequently, it came to be known as the ‘French disease’ – the army of the French King Charles VIII (1470–1498) was held responsible for the spread of the epidemic in Europe.
  • In 1564, the Italian anatomist and surgeon Gabriele Falloppio (1523–1562) recommended, in his work *De Morbo Gallico* (“On the French Disease”) the use of linen pouches soaked in medicinal and spermicidal substances such as mercury salts.
  • The English court physician Dr Condom – whose existence cannot be historically verified – recommended to King Charles II of England (reign: 1660–1685) the use of sheep’s intestines to prevent infection and pregnancy.
  • In 1671, the French writer Madame de Sévigné (1626–1696) lamented in a letter to her daughter, the Comtesse Françoise Marguerite de Grignan, that the rubber sheath was “a suit of armour against lust, but a spider’s web against danger”.
  • The poem ‘A Scots Answer to a British Vision’ from 1706 marks the first mention of a ‘condum’ in English literature. It was written by John Hamilton, 2nd Lord Belhaven and Stenton (1656–1708).
  • The English physician Daniel Turner (1667–1741) first used the word ‘condom’ in 1717 in a scientific treatise on syphilis.
  • Giovanni Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798), arguably the most famous womaniser of his time, used condoms made from animal intestines to protect himself against syphilis. It is said that he would inflate them before use to ensure they were in perfect condition (and to amuse the ladies present).
  • Around 1750, a Mrs Philips ran the world’s first condom shop in London, catering to customers from all over Europe; she later shared the monopoly with a Mrs Perkins.
  • The German poet Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) used condoms made of violet-blue silk, which were made to measure by a tailor but proved unreliable – Heine died of syphilis.
  • In 1789, the German doctor and syphilis specialist Christoph Girtanner (1760–1800) proposed a protective covering for the penis made from fish-bladder condoms; however, he argued that their public sale should be prohibited on moral grounds.
  • In 1820, the British manufacturer and inventor Thomas Hancock (1786–1865) was granted his first rubber patent for the manufacture of elastic bands and fabrics for gloves, stockings and shoes.
  • After the American chemist Charles Nelson Goodyear (1800–1860) discovered vulcanisation (the treatment of rubber with sulphur followed by heating), it became possible to produce a new type of material from rubber, known as ‘gum’, which was stretchy, waterproof, tear-resistant and therefore durable. Through vulcanisation, the individual macromolecules of the rubber are linked together to form a large molecular network. The invention of hot vulcanisation was further developed by the aforementioned Thomas Hancock and was ready for practical application by 1843. Hancock applied for a patent for vulcanisation before Goodyear, who lacked the funds to do so. In 1855, however, priority was awarded to Goodyear in a patent dispute. In the same year, Goodyear presented the first rubber condom, although this did not go on sale until 1870. It was welded together, meaning it had a longitudinal seam, and had a wall thickness of one to two millimetres (today’s standard: three to eight hundredths of a millimetre; human skin is about ten times thicker).
  • Meyer’s Conversations-Lexicon no longer ignores the condom, but includes it in the 1851 edition. However, the entry is steeped in moral indignation: ‘Condom, a sheath made of gold-beater’s skin (= the outer layer of the appendix), which is pulled over the male member by debauched men before sexual intercourse to prevent conception, and presumably also to prevent venereal infection; one of those ingenious inventions to which these depraved times have given rise, but which the moral man despises, indeed scarcely knows by name.”
  • In 1870, the Scottish chemist Charles MacIntosh (1766–1843), who was already manufacturing rubberised raincoats, began the industrial production of condoms for the international market.
  • In 1873, contraceptives were banned in the USA. Condoms were not affected by this ban, but had to be sold with the label ‘For disease prevention only’.
  • In 1912, the Berlin-based rubber goods manufacturer Julius Fromm (1883–1945) perfected the production of condoms by dipping glass flasks into a liquid solution of raw latex. This dipping method made it possible to produce paper-thin condoms without a seam and with a reservoir for semen.
  • During the First World War (1914–1918), the German, French and British armies supplied their soldiers with condoms. US soldiers did not receive any – and contracted sexually transmitted diseases far more frequently.
  • In 1916, Fromm introduced the first machine-made condoms of the type we know today, thereby creating the first branded condom, ‘Fromm’s Act’. The first factories were located in Berlin-Köpenick and Berlin-Friedrichshagen, and they achieved a daily production of 150,000 units.
  • In 1922, Germany’s Minister of Justice, Gustav Radbruch (1878–1949; SPD), imposed a ban on the advertising and sale of contraceptives. A similar ban had been in place in France since 1920.
  • In 1929, the first latex condom was sold in the USA.
  • In 1938, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) introduced quality controls for condoms for the first time, with the aim of reducing the high defect rate, which stood at around 60 per cent at the time.
  • In 1951, the electrical testing method for condoms was established. Previously, only so-called water burst tests had been used.
  • In 1959, at the instigation of the then Federal Minister for Family Affairs, Franz-Josef Wuermeling (1900–1986; CDU), the advertising of condoms and their sale in vending machines ‘in public places, on paths and in streets’ was prohibited by law (Section 41a of the Trade Regulation Act). The Federal Court of Justice lifted the ban in 1970.
  • In 1960, condoms containing silicone-based lubricants came onto the market for the first time, making them more comfortable to use.
  • In 1968, condoms could for the first time be coated with spermicidal substances.
  • In 1981, the dlf seal – the quality mark of the German Latex Research and Development Association – was introduced as the first German quality seal for condoms.
  • In 1992, ‘Femidom’, the female condom, was launched.
  • In 1995, the European testing standard EN 600 replaced the German Industrial Standard DIN 58993; from then on, no more than 0.25 per cent of condoms were permitted to be leaky (previously 1.4 per cent). The international standard EN ISO 4074 has been in force since 2002; condoms bearing the ‘EN 600’ mark were withdrawn from sale by 2004.
  • In Bavaria, a ‘condom requirement’ has been in force since 16 May 2001 for female and male sex workers and their clients (Section 6 of the Ordinance on the Prevention of Communicable Diseases).
  • In the wake of the AIDS epidemic, condom sales in Germany rose by 59 million between 1986 and 1987, reaching a total of 155 million units. By 1993, condom sales in Germany had risen to 173 million; by 2009, they had reached 215 million.
  • Condoms are currently the only form of protection against both unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases. Whilst the contraceptive pill is around ten times more reliable in terms of contraception, it does not protect against AIDS, syphilis & the like. Condoms are now available in a wide variety of colours, with studs, ridges, odourless, or – first introduced exactly 30 years ago – flavoured. GD