Reay Tannahill, in her 1980 book "Sex in History" (A Scarborough Book, Stein
and Day, New York) states:
"...it was in the eighteenth century that the condom began to come into use
as a contraceptive. It was the great Italian anatomist, Fallopius, who
claimed to have invented it--though as a protection against syphilis, not
conception. In a work published in 1564, two years after his death, he
explained how the uncircumcised could guard against infection by fitting a
small linen sheath over the glans, and then drawing the foreskin over it.
By the eighteenth century, condoms--still advocated as an armor against
syphilis, but beginning to be used (as Casanova said) "to put the fair sex
under shelter from all fear"--were made usually from sheep gut, sometimes
from fish skin, and were stocked and sold in brothels as well as by a few
specialist wholesalers wuch as London's Mrs. Philips, who was prepared to
supply "apothecaries, chymists, druggists etc" as well as "ambasadors,
foreigners, gentlemen, and captains of ships &c going abroad." (page 336)
In the last quarter of the ninteenth century, the US War department began
issuing condoms to sailors on shore leave to prevent disease and During WWI,
soldiers serving overseas were given condoms as well. (pages 367-368)
Condoms were difficult to make and expensive until vulcanization (1843-1844)
which "led to the manufacture of a crepe rubber type that was an improvement
in all ways, and by the 1870's it was being used with increasing frequency.
An air of impregnable respectability was leny to it by packaging that
featured full-color portraits of Queen Victoria and Mr. Gladstone. Fifty
years later, liquid latex and automation led to a considerable drop in
price; there are no statistics for British or German manufacturers, but in
America the mid 1930's sales approached 317 million a year." (page 411)
Tannahill's book is a good intro to the subject and her references should
proove quite helpfull.... (there is even a ninteenth century recipe for
making them!).
Mary Ellin D'Agostino
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