A brief history of the condom

The condom has gone from a medicated linen cloth to a tested medical device in a little over 450 years.

Probably not in the way popular histories claim. The earliest “condom” story is a myth, and it isn’t really about condoms.

In the second century AD, the Greek writer Antoninus Liberalis wrote down a story about King Minos of Crete. In the story, Minos is childless. He ejaculates snakes, scorpions and millipedes, which kill the women he sleeps with. A goat’s bladder is placed inside a woman to catch them, and Minos is then able to have children with his wife, Pasiphae.

Because the bladder goes inside a woman, the story is sometimes described as an early female condom. But it’s a legend, and it’s about curing childlessness, not about preventing pregnancy or disease. The date of 150 AD that often goes with it, and that we gave in the first version of this article, isn’t documented either.

Popular histories also describe ancient Egyptian, Roman and Chinese condoms. We couldn’t find reliable evidence for any of them. One version has the Romans using condoms against Syphilis. The Syphilis epidemic that swept across Europe began in 1495, more than a thousand years later.

Read more in “STIs in history: wartime figures, old cures and myths”

One of the earliest detailed descriptions of something like a condom comes from Gabriele Falloppio, the Italian anatomist who gave his name to the fallopian tubes.

Syphilis had been spreading across Europe since the 1490s. Falloppio died in Padua in 1562. His lectures on the disease, De morbo gallico (“On the French disease”), were printed after his death from notes taken by his students, in 1563 or 1564.

In them, he describes a small linen cloth, soaked in a medicine and made to fit over the head of the penis. He says he tried it on 1,100 men and that none of them was infected.

Two things are worth knowing about that famous trial:

• It’s his own claim: it was made in a lecture and printed after he died, so there’s no way of checking it.
• It wasn’t a condom as we’d know it: it was a medicated cloth that covered only the head of the penis.

For around 200 years, condoms were made from animal gut, and they were used mainly to guard against infection.

• Dudley Castle: condoms made of animal membrane were found at Dudley Castle in the West Midlands and are usually dated to about 1640. The castle surrendered in the Civil War in 1646 and was partly demolished the following year. They’re often described as the oldest condoms ever found, though we couldn’t confirm that.
• The British Museum’s condoms: the museum holds two sheaths made of animal membrane, dated to about 1790 to 1810. One has a pink ribbon to hold it in place. The museum says sheaths like these were worn to prevent disease, and not as a means of birth control.
• The London trade: in about 1790, a Mrs Phillips was making condoms at a workshop near what is now Leicester Square. According to the British Museum, which holds her trade card, she ran a discreet mail order business for shy customers and exported her condoms in large quantities.
• How they were made: a recipe from 1824 describes soaking sheep’s gut, turning it inside out, scraping it, treating it with the fumes of burning sulphur, washing it, blowing it up, drying it and cutting it to a length of 7 to 8 inches. The open end was finished with a ribbon.

In his memoirs, the Venetian adventurer Casanova calls a condom “the English article”.

Nobody knows. Dictionaries date the word in English to about 1706 and give its origin as unknown.

The best known story is that it was named after a Dr Condom, or a Colonel Cundum, who made sheaths for King Charles II. The Online Etymology Dictionary traces that story to 1709 and says there’s no evidence for it. Even a slang dictionary of 1811 was careful, saying only that the condom was “said to have been invented by one colonel Cundum”.

The same dictionary records another slang name. To use a condom was “to fight in armour”.

Read more in “The clap and other STI names through the ages”

Rubber condoms followed the discovery of vulcanisation, a way of treating natural rubber with sulphur and heat to make it tougher and more elastic.

• The discovery: Charles Goodyear found the process in the United States in 1839 and was granted a patent for it in 1844. Thomas Hancock patented it in Britain in November 1843.
• The first rubber condoms: they are usually dated to the 1850s. Museums often give the year as 1855.
• What they were like: heavy and reusable, with a seam along one side. One museum describes them as 2 millimetres thick. They were washed after use and kept for the next time.
• Losing the seam: towards the end of the 19th century, makers began dipping condom-shaped moulds into rubber dissolved in solvent. This got rid of the seam, but the solvents were flammable and factories sometimes caught fire.

Our original article called these the first synthetic condoms. They weren’t. Vulcanised rubber is natural rubber that has been treated.

Latex wasn’t invented in 1920, as is often claimed. It’s the natural milky fluid of the rubber tree. What changed in the 1920s was how condoms were made.

By the 1920s, makers in Germany and America had begun dipping moulds straight into liquid latex. It was safer than using solvents, and in time it gave us the thin, disposable condoms we know today.

In Britain, the story is largely the story of one company:

• 1915: the London Rubber Company begins trading, selling imported condoms.
• 1929: it registers the Durex name.
• 1932: latex condoms are first made in Britain, by hand, for the Durex brand. The process was devised by Lucian Landau, a student from Poland who was barely 20.
• 1942: latex is diverted to the company so that it can supply the British forces with condoms.
• The early 1950s: with automated machines, production reaches about 2 million condoms a week. In the early 1930s it had been 2 million a year.

Armies took very different views of protection. For most of the First World War, the British Army didn’t issue its soldiers with any personal protection against infection, according to the historian Mark Harrison. From early 1918, it handed out some 130,000 tubes of disinfectant. New Zealand’s army went further. At the end of 1917, it adopted a kit that included condoms.

In 1961, the contraceptive pill became available through the NHS, and condoms had a serious rival. Read more in “Is the pill more popular than condoms?”

In the 1980s, HIV put condoms at the centre of public health advice.

On 21 November 1986, Norman Fowler, then the Secretary of State for Social Services, told the House of Commons that a leaflet would be sent to all 23 million households in the country, backed by television and radio advertising. Among the messages he set out was: “Stick to one partner, but if you do not, use a condom.”

In 1987, the government launched its campaign under the slogan “AIDS: Don’t Die of Ignorance”, and a leaflet was delivered to every household in the UK.

The World Health Organization says that, according to model estimates, increased condom use since 1990 has prevented around 117 million new HIV infections.

Read more in “How likely am I to get HIV based on the act?”

Since the 1990s, condoms have come in new materials and a new shape.

• The internal condom: the first internal (female) condom, made of polyurethane, was approved in the United States in 1993. A second version, made of nitrile, replaced it in 2009. The NHS says almost all internal condoms are made of thin, soft plastic or synthetic rubber.
• Latex-free condoms: Durex says it launched a polyurethane condom in 1997. Condoms made of polyisoprene are also sold.

Read more in “Female condoms: how they work and how to use one”

Used correctly every time, condoms are up to 98% effective at preventing pregnancy, and the NHS says they’re the best way to protect you and your partner from HIV and other STIs.

• Typical use: if they’re not used correctly, condoms are 82% effective. The NHS says that means around 1 in 5 women who use condoms for a year will get pregnant.
• What to check: the NHS says to look for a CE mark or UKCA mark on the packet, and to check the use by date.
• The standard: the international standard for latex condoms, ISO 4074, sets out the requirements they must meet and how they’re tested.
• What they don’t cover: Herpes and genital warts can still be passed on if the infection is on skin that the condom doesn’t cover. The same goes for Syphilis sores.

Unlike their rubber ancestors, modern condoms are made to be used once.

Read more in “Why you should never reuse a condom” and “Can you still get an STI if you wear a condom?”

If you’re not sure which test to choose, a screen that covers several common STIs is a good place to start. Better2Know offers:

• Full Screen: tests for 7 infections, including HIV, Syphilis, Hepatitis B, Chlamydia and Gonorrhoea, from 28 days after sex, with results in 3 days (5 days for the home test). You can book it at one of our clinics or order a Full Screen home test.
• Peace of Mind: tests for Chlamydia, Gonorrhoea and Syphilis from 14 days after sex, with results in 2 days. You can also order a home test kit.
• Platinum Screen: tests for 12 infections, including Herpes 1 and Herpes 2, from 28 days after sex, with results in 3 days.

If you test before 45 days, a negative HIV result needs a repeat test. A Syphilis test in the first 3 months after sex can miss the infection, so you may need a repeat test. Not sure which test you need? Our Patient Care Team is available 24/7 on 020 7099 0955.

Who invented the condom?

No single person. Gabriele Falloppio described a medicated linen cloth in the 16th century, animal gut condoms were in use by the 1640s, and rubber condoms followed in the 1850s. There’s no evidence for the story of a Dr Condom.

What were condoms made of before latex?

Linen, then animal gut, usually from sheep, and from the 1850s vulcanised rubber. Latex condoms date from the 1920s.

When were latex condoms first made?

Makers in Germany and America were dipping latex condoms by the 1920s. They were first made in Britain in 1932.

From a medicated cloth to animal gut, rubber and latex, people have been trying to make sex safer for more than 450 years. Today’s condoms are thin, tested and very effective, but no condom covers everything, so regular testing is still part of looking after your sexual health.

Book a Full Screen at a clinic near you or order a home test kit. Our Patient Care Team is available 24/7 on 020 7099 0955.

Not in the UK? Choose your country from the selector at the top of the page for local tests and prices.

This article originally appeared on 4 October 2013 and was last updated on 3 October 2026.

This article is general information and not a substitute for personal medical advice.

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