No, you will agree on what has to be considered humanity’s best invention. The wheel? Antibiotics? The dishwasher? All legitimate contenders. But today, we are looking at another clinical innovation that, even though perhaps harmless, has converted lifestyles on Earth: The condom.
Thanks to those little latex sleeves, human beings may have sex without passing on STDs or getting (someone) pregnant. The safety isn’t always one hundred% guaranteed ― in step with Planned Parenthood inside the US, condoms are 98% powerful at stopping being pregnant while used flawlessly. Since people aren’t, in truth, perfect, in truth the contraceptive is ready 87% robust ― around 13 of 100 people who use condoms as their best start control will conceive.
Still! Condoms have saved lives and granted women autonomy during times of history when getting pregnant out of wedlock threatened them with pariah fame, if not worse. Let’s dive into the records of happy hats because the Internet calls them.
Condoms to protect against snakes down there
The first mention of a condom-like tool dates back to 3000 BC. King Minos ― whom you would possibly consider for his massive labyrinth containing a minotaur at its center ― was stated to apply a goat bladder to guard his sexual partners against contracting an alternative unusual sexual ailment: Legend has it, Minos’ semen contained serpents, and scorpions.
Sounds ugly, indeed. Some debts declare that Minos sheathed his penis with the goat bladder, while others say his spouse Pasiphae inserted it into her vagina so that you could save the pesky animals from biting her private components. Either way, it is the earliest account of a barrier tool used to prevent what we these days could bear in mind as a sexually transmitted sickness.
Class-coded condoms
The historical Egyptians used safety as nicely. Archaeologist Howard Carter and his crew found a condom in Tutankhamun’s tomb containing samples of the pharaoh’s DNA. It was fabricated from first-class linen soaked in olive oil and connected to a string the researchers trusted would have tied around his waist. They dated it to around 1350 BC.
Condoms weren’t only for the god-kings, both. Other Egyptians used them too ― however, most effective inside the shade assigned to their social class. No hazard of fooling your date into believing you had been part of the pharaoh’s inner circle while the color of your condom made you out to be a lowly farmer.
In historical Rome, condoms had been fabricated from linen and intestines or bladders of sheep and goats. The Romans did now not wrap up as a way to save you concept ― alternatively, the primary motivator was preventing the spread of sicknesses like syphilis. They were additionally stated to make condoms out of muscle tissues from guys they killed in the conflict, “but no tough proof for this exists,” the authors of a look at posted inside the Indian Journal of Urology point out.
The rubber revolution
There are numerous theories about the time period “condom” originated. It should move returned to the Latin phrase “condus,” which means receptacle or vessel, or to the Persian phrase “kemdu,” which refers to a long piece of animal intestine used for a garage; the authors of the Indian have a look at factor out.
In their ebook “Contraception through the long time” from 1964, B.E. Finch and Hugh Green write that the call maximum possibly comes from a doctor on the court docket of King Charles II, who ruled in the 17th century. As the story goes, Charles was dissatisfied with the developing number of his illegitimate children. So Dr. Condom (yes, that was his real name) did a few research. He got here up with a sheath made from softened lamb gut and suggested his master to wear it at some stage in sex to prevent impregnating his mistresses eventually.
We must thank American inventor Charles Goodyear for the first model of the present-day condom, as we are aware of it. In the mid-1800s, he determined the process of vulcanization, in which herbal rubber is heated up with sulfur to shape a material that is extra malleable, long-lasting, and elastic. By 1860, condoms had been produced on a massive scale. They were costly; however, they returned in the day, and guys have been told to quickly and then reuse them. (Condoms these days are strict one-use, most effective!)
Second-most famous birth control approach globally
The invention of latex in the 1920s revolutionized the condom industry. Today’s latex condoms can be stretched to eight instances of their original length earlier than they rip and come pre-lubricated, ribbed, or flavored.
According to a UN examination, the male condom became the second-maximum not-unusual contraceptive approach used worldwide in 2019, beaten handiest through lady sterilization. In 2019, 21% of people who use birth control used a condom ― a few 189 million users that 12 months.
Condoms are also essential in stopping the unfold of HIV. According to a meta-evaluation performed by the Center for AIDS Intervention Research in the US, while used consistently and successfully, condoms are 90% to 95% effective in protecting against HIV.
International Condom Day, which is widely known on February thirteen, changed into hooked up by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, a US-based totally non-earnings founded in 1987 in response to the AIDS epidemic. The enterprise celebrates the holiday by handing out loose condoms.
