The history of the male condom

You might have used a condom before, but do you know its history?  

I didn’t - so I did some research. 

Side note - we’re making two different posts to cover this topic, one for the male condom and one for the female condom. This post focuses on the male condom.  

So, according to the Thackray Museum of Medicine, the first record of a condom dates back to 3000 B.C. in ancient Greece. Apparently King Minos of Crete had semen that contained scorpions and serpents, and his mistresses would die after they had sex with him. That’s a pretty high price to pay for sex, and, I imagine, a very painful way to go. Apparently, Queen Pasiphae had to have a goats bladder placed inside her vagina to protect her, and it actually worked, allowing her to have eight kids after this. And of course, having the added bonus of not dying from scorpion infested semen.  

The National Library of Medicine states that the Ancient Egyptians were one of the first civilisations to use sheaths. They used sheaths made of linen from around 1000 B.C., to prevent diseases. But Egyptian men didn’t use these sheath condoms for this reason only - they would wear different coloured sheaths to communicate their social status. Who knew that a condom could have a social function too?  

In Ancient Rome, condoms were made of the intestine or bladder of different animals (mostly sheep or goat), and linen as well. There are rumours that they would at times use the muscle tissue from deceased combatants but the National Library of Medicine notes that there’s not actually any hard evidence to support this claim. 

A few honourable mentions here - in ancient China, they made condoms from silk paper, which I imagine must have felt pretty nice. On the flipside, in Japan, they made something called “kabuto-gata,” which were usually made from shell, or sometimes horns. This, I can’t imagine having felt very good. 

When Charles Goodyear, an American chemist, discovered the process that creates rubber in 1839, this really changed the game. The early rubber condoms that were produced only covered the glans (which is the head of the penis) and were creatively nicknamed “American tips.” And then, in 1869, rubber condoms became full length. Apparently they were both uncomfortable and expensive, but their one advantage was that they could be reused if you washed them. How environmentally friendly.  

In the 1920s, latex was invented, creating the condom that we know today, which has a super high tensile strength (this is how much it can be stretched before it breaks - I think we’ve all seen the videos of people putting rolling condoms over their feet like giant socks). Apparently with our modern technology we can now make 3000 of these an hour. And, of course, they come in a variety of fun flavours, such as scotch whiskey, bacon, cola, chocolate and pumpkin spice.  

And there you have it, the long and dynamic history of the condom. I don’t know about you but they’ve been around for a lot longer than I thought.  

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