![Three [?]18th-Century sheep gut condoms,](https://www.christies.com/img/LotImages/2000/CSK/2000_CSK_08778_0056_000(011419).jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
A paper slip discovered with this lot is inscribed "CONDOMS (French Letters or Cap-Anglais) DISCOVERED BY LADY SALMONG AMONGST SOME 18th Century DOCUMENTS."
Male contraceptives were first alluded to in the 11th Century by a Greek writer Antoninus Liberalis, in a reference to the mythological ruler Minor of Crete. In the 16th Century Gabriel Fallope suggested the use of a "fine linen bag" and a preparation of "astringent herbs". Colonel Cundum is said to have invented the dried gut of sheep worn by men in the act of coition to prevent venereal infection, c.1700. The word condom first appears in 1717 in a dissertation on venereal disease Syphillis a Pratica by Dr. Daniel Turner:
The condom being the best, is not only preservation our libertines have found out at present; and yet by reason of its blunting the sensation, I have heard some of them acknowledge, that they had often chose to risque a clap, rather than engage cum Hastic sic Clypeatis.
Male contraceptives were first alluded to in the 11th Century by a Greek writer Antoninus Liberalis, in a reference to the mythological ruler Minor of Crete. In the 16th Century Gabriel Fallope suggested the use of a "fine linen bag" and a preparation of "astringent herbs". Colonel Cundum is said to have invented the dried gut of sheep worn by men in the act of coition to prevent venereal infection, c.1700. The word condom first appears in 1717 in a dissertation on venereal disease Syphillis a Pratica by Dr. Daniel Turner:
The condom being the best, is not only preservation our libertines have found out at present; and yet by reason of its blunting the sensation, I have heard some of them acknowledge, that they had often chose to risque a clap, rather than engage cum Hastic sic Clypeatis.