5 Things You Didn't Know: Condoms

The historical effort to make a condom that prevents pregnancy and the exchange of STDs while being as unobtrusive as possible during the sexual act has been mired by religious mores, outright denial and extreme levels of creativity. Most parties, regardless of their general opinion on the use of condoms, have come to accept that sex is all but inevitable between human beings. With that in mind, it stands to reason that condoms serve a number of noble purposes. Shocking and sad to think it took thousands of years for humans to figure that out.

Unfortunately, the condom suffers from at least one massive PR problem: namely, that the condom always looks like a great idea after the fact. However, before and during the act when it matters the most, not so much.

In an effort to give their profile a boost, we took a look at five things you didn’t know about condoms.

1- Condoms have appeared in cave paintings

In Johnny Come Lately: A Short History of the Condom, author Jeannette Parisot claims the appearance of condoms in cave paintings are estimated to be 15,000 years old. Although Parisot notes that the condom is being used during sexual intercourse, that doesn't signify the condition for which the man was wearing the condom. This is another matter altogether, since the man in the cave painting could have been brandishing the condom for one of three reasons: some sort of ritual, as protection against pregnancy or as protection against an STD.

All three are reasonable possibilities. There is no cause to think that the clever minds behind cave paintings hadn't also discovered some connection between the sexual act and one of any number of outcomes, including pregnancy or a stretch of days featuring extremely painful urination.

2- Condoms used to be available only by prescription

Condoms have come a long way toward both general acceptance and availability. An 1824 text, described as state-of-the-art, offers a condom-making recipe with no fewer than a dozen extremely time-consuming steps involved in making condoms from sheep's "intestina caeca." With so much time required, it is little surprise that early condoms were considered reusable.

In the U.S., there was a time that condoms were available only by prescription, but doctors held up a double standard -- they would prescribe them to men so that husbands could protect themselves against getting STDs from prostitutes, but they wouldn’t prescribe them to women so they could prevent themselves from getting pregnant or for any other reason.

3- The oldest rubber condoms date back to 1855

Discovered during excavations of Dudley Castle in West Midlands, England, these condom fragments were made from the guts of animals and it is believed they were distributed to slow the spread of venereal diseases (now known as STDs) during the English Civil Wars.

Distributing rubber condoms to soldiers to slow or prevent STDs has not always been common practice. In the U.S., during World War I, condoms were discouraged by the American Social Hygiene Association, which felt that if you were foolish enough to have sex, you deserved the STD you got. One of the chief proponents was the Assistant Secretary of the Navy at the time, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. No surprise that many of those vets brought STDs home.

We've got a few more things you didn't know about condoms...

By World War II, the outlook was decidedly more reasonable and American GIs heading overseas were led by films encouraging them: "Don't forget -- put it on before you put it in."

4- Condoms have been sold in vending machines since 1928

The condom available in vending machines celebrates its 80th anniversary in 2008, courtesy of the company who manufactured the first brand-name condom, Germany-based, Fromm’s. Their product, Fromm’s Act, not only appeared in vending machines first, they also had a presumably unauthorized Mickey Mouse as their pitch-man.

Putting condoms in machines has, at times, proven controversial, especially in the U.S. when they appeared in high schools. The concern was that this kind of availability would promote sex -- i.e., you weren’t thinking about having it until you saw the condom. This has often been the stance of conservative or religious groups who pitch abstinence.

5- Invisible condoms may be next

For all those folks forced to use leather, silk, velvet or rubber as thick as an inner tube, the invisible condom could only be a pipe dream. In this case, "invisible" actually means a gel that hardens according to increased temperatures.

Clinical trials on the invisible condom have been carried out by Quebec’s Laval University, in conjunction with the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Centre Hospitalier de l'Universite Laval.

It is one of a number of products being developed which falls into the category of a female condom, some of which have received government approval. The Invisible Condom, however, is still awaiting approval.



Condom use worldwide varies drastically. Consider the difference between Japan and Somalia: The Japanese have the highest rate of condom use in the world compared to other birth control methods, as high as 80%. Meanwhile, in late 2003, condoms were outlawed by the Islamic Ulema Council in Somalia, which declared that selling or using them was potentially punishable by flogging.

Also, in 2001, the World Health Organization concluded that condoms with spermicide nonoxynol-9 not only were no more effective at preventing birth control than those without it, but also that the chemical increased “the risk of HIV infection when used frequently by women at high risk of infection.”



According to a 1997 study published in The Journal of Sex Research of the many motivations people have for engaging in sex, procreation is the motive cited the least. Virtually everyone who’s had sex can agree. The staunch hold-out is the Catholic church, which continues to advocate sex for procreation purposes only and argues against the use of birth control methods such as condoms. Despite this, the church is a major force against the spread of STDs such as HIV in areas that need it most such as Africa, even though they continue their one-dimensional pitch of abstinence.

In the past, the consequences of sex without condoms included pregnancy and a host of very irritating, but generally not life-threatening, STDs. HIV changed all that, making the decision to have sex with or without protection a potentially deadly one; and while a vaccine or a cure for HIV remains the subject of laboratory research, people are not going to stop having sex -- ever.

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