For most of human history, the thing we enjoyed the most was often a gamble with the most long-term consequences. Even the most primitive cave-dwellers surely couldn’t help but notice, after all, that banging like bonobos and the female of the species getting knocked up were somehow connected. Certainly, by around 5,000 years ago, Egyptian and Mesopotamian sources began to concern themselves with patriarchal as well as matriarchal lineage, early prognoses for pregnancy and (somewhat hopeful) contraceptive advice.
The latter is particularly important. After all, the ancients enjoyed a good root as much as anybody – and they were likewise not always so keen on dealing with the lifetime of complications that often followed.
For women, especially, not having to wear their bodies out pumping out an endless succession of progeny was a pretty good motivator to figure out a way of getting horizontal action without the usual result. The Romans were so keen on a plant whose hormones acted in a similar way to the modern pill that they sent it extinct.
Men, on the other hand, were no doubt as apt as too many are today to simply abandon the consequences of priapism and perhaps the good old siris-goggles. But they were very keen on it not hurting when they peed afterwards. As, surely, were women.
Consequently, in the best interests of both, it’s probably no surprise that the history of the condom stretches back well over 5,000 years. Perhaps the Trojans took their name from the rubber, not vice-versa. Whatever the case, the history of the humble franger goes right back to one of the earliest civilisations.
The oldest documented mention of a condom is around 3000 BCE in the legend of King Minos of Crete. He was cursed to have ‘serpents and scorpions’ in his semen, so his wife used a goat bladder as a form of physical barrier during intercourse.
She even took it out of the goat first.
But, in the history of ‘why does it hurt when I pee?’, “serpents and scorpions in his semen” surely has to be the most excruciatingly vivid metaphor ever coined.
As the history of the condom rolled on (boom-boom!), so did the experiments with materials, which tended to be practical, if not exactly romantic. Across cultures the same idea appeared in linen, silk paper and lamb intestines: anything that could be fashioned into a sheath.
The Greeks famously used ostrakon, shards of pottery, to wipe their arses. When it came to the ol’ jimmy hat, the Japanese of the 15th century went one better, capping the glans with tortoise shell. Comfort, one suspects, was not the primary design criterion.
Until the Native Americans got their revenge, with the arrival of syphilis in Europe, the main worry remained pregnancy rather than infection. That changed with the Italian anatomist Gabriele Falloppio (must... not... make... ‘floppy fellatio’ joke...), who in a treatise on the new disease recommended a linen sheath secured with a ribbon. Prevention of the French disease (so-called by the English, but known as the ‘Neapolitan disease’ to the French: the nomenclature varied according to whom the relevant country hated the most), not family planning, now drove the technology.
Rubber arrived with Charles Goodyear in the late 19th century. The first models were reputedly almost as thick as bicycle inner tubes: functional, but unlikely to enhance the experience. Not so much showering with a raincoat as with a deep-sea wetsuit. In the 1920s Merle Youngs of Trojan pioneered latex, then spent years making it thinner and stronger. The modern franger was born.
The AIDS epidemic of the 1980s turned the condom from private convenience into public-health necessity. The female condom followed in 1984. A decade later polyurethane versions appeared for those allergic to latex; animal-membrane alternatives, with their microscopic pores, had never protected against viruses.
Today the materials remain latex, animal intestine or plastic. But a new contender is in late-stage trials. Researchers at the University of Wollongong have spent more than a decade developing the ‘Geldom’, a hydrogel sheath that could be loaded with antiviral agents against HIV, herpes and HPV. It sounds hilariously like the spray-on condoms in Ben Elton’s This Other Eden:
It would stretch, but it would not break, ever. This was fine for the containment of a bit of sexual effluvia, but less convenient if you needed a wee and you had no solvent. Max, like most men, had experienced the pain and embarrassment of driving to the chemist with a big balloon of piss hanging off the end of his dong – Ben Elton, “This Other Eden”.
From goat bladder to smart gel, the principle has stayed constant: maximise the fun and minimise the consequences. Human ingenuity has rarely been better applied.
