Safe sex, from tortoiseshell to polyurethane
What do Charles Goodyear, Casanova and Franklin D. Roosevelt have in common? Each, in their own time and way, was a fierce advocate of the condom. Legendary 18th century lover Giovanni Casanova used them during his amorous adventures -- and, grateful as he was for them, was probably the first to complain about condoms on record, deriding them as “dead skins.”
Elena Conis
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Casanova had a point. In his day, condoms were made from dried, stitched sheep gut.
By the time he tried them out, condoms had been around for at least a few hundred years. In the 1540s, Italian Renaissance doctor Gabriele Fallopius showed that a layer of linen could protect an “adventurous” man from syphilis.
But despite images of men wearing condom-like sheaths in ancient Egyptian paintings, historians aren’t sure when the condom was first used for sex.
They do know that men tried many materials (leather, silk, tortoiseshell and goat bladders) and had countless monikers for the prophylactics, such as French letters (in England), English raincoats (in France), capotes, pouches and skins.
And, of course, rubbers. Charles Goodyear secured a patent on rubber prophylactics in the 1840s, a few years after a lab mishap led him to discover that a bit of chemical tinkering turned temperamental tree rubber into something stretchy and elastic. The first rubber condoms were as thick as bicycle tires, and some covered only the tip of the penis -- leading many Americans to stick to imported livestock intestines, pricey as they were.
Advances in rubber technology promised to make condoms comfortable, cheap and widely available -- until an 1873 law criminalized interstate contraception trade.
Eventually, an outrageously high rate of STDs among World War I soldiers began to bring some people in government, including Roosevelt, around. As assistant secretary of the Navy at the time, Roosevelt encouraged his troops to carry condoms when at sea. But it wasn’t until World War II that the anti-birth control trade laws were brought down.
Even today, condoms still struggle for acceptance. Critics of the Bush administration charge that contraceptive information on U.S. government websites has been edited to downplay condoms’ effectiveness in preventing pregnancy and disease, and that U.S. delegates have taken unpopular anti-condom stances at international meetings.
Still, the little rubber has come a long way from Casanova’s dead skins. Today, it’s available as plain, ribbed, lubed, extra-long, flavored, custom-fit or gender-specific (female condoms debuted in 1992). Couples worldwide now use more than 6 billion condoms a year. At last, a condom for everyone.
