The Humble Little Condom

From the New York Times:

…If this were ancient Rome, you might find yourself wearing a fur condom made from the mane of a she-mule. In the Islamic world around the turn of the first millennium, your device might have been fashioned of tar or liquid lead. Savor the mental image.

The author is Aine Collier, an assistant professor of English at the University of Maryland, and her survey of primitive condoms and other pregnancy preventives leaves you amazed that there aren’t 60.6 billion of us by now instead of merely 6.6 billion. Birth control, a minor annoyance these days, was for centuries more akin to torture. “You want to have sex using that?” either partner might well have said way back when. “Are you kidding me? That thing’s made of tree bark. I’d rather just have a baby.”

Gradually, animal intestines became the preferred material, giving way only relatively recently to rubber, latex and such. But Collier’s book is as much a history of venereal disease and the ebb and flow of social mores as it is of the condom. And that (aided by Collier’s liquid-lead writing style) makes it surprisingly dull. There’s only so much to be said about the odd rectangle of religion, birth control, sexually transmitted disease and war. This book says it over and over:

• Culture discovers or rediscovers that sex leads to pregnancy.
• Culture engages in war or conquest, spreading sexually transmitted diseases.
• Culture discovers or rediscovers that condoms protect against sexually transmitted diseases.
• Religious leaders and others rail against birth control.