They find condoms of pig gut from two centuries ago

The workers of the National Historical Archive of Toledo in Spain, they studied the correspondence of the Duchy of Béjar (1814 -1830) when they found a package; At first it looked like it was a papyrus but when they saw it in more detail they discovered that it was two condoms two centuries ago.

 

These condoms are made of pork belly At one end they were sewn and at the other they have a rope to be adjusted. To last they had to be soaked in milk to soften their roughness and then, once used, they were disinfected with warm water and filled with talcum powder or potato starch until the next use.

 

They were luxury objects so their use was common among people of the nobility and more than as contraceptives , were used as shields against syphilis or gonorrhea in prostitution environments.

 

The copies, clandestine and reusable, belong to a few years in which the fear of venereal diseases It was a living thing and the church vetoed them because they were considered "nature scandal". The origin of these two condoms is unknown, but it is probable that they arrived from France, pig or lamb casings, entered Spain clandestinely from England or France.

 

This is not the first time that a copy of these is found, a couple of years ago two were found in a book of medicine in the library of the University of Salamanca and the British museum was given the task of organizing an exhibition of condoms 450 years old. Even in 1992 the house Christie's auctioned one of the early nineteenth century, of French origin, which measured twenty centimeters and had drawn a half-naked religious among three ecclesiastics in erection.

Source
BBC World