It is difficult to imagine today's drug-stores, pharmacies, supermarket, grocery stores and slot-machines without different small or large packs with a word "condom" on them. The variety of these useful things is incredible. Under variety is meant not only their size, color or price, but their scent, form and the presence of different interesting '' devices'' as well. Condoms can be transparent, opaque, tinted, nipple-ended, crowned or rippled. Having a huge diversity of condoms made of latex, polyurethane and lambskin it can seem incredible that our ancestors used linen, tortoiseshell, leather, silk, oiled paper sheaths to protect themselves. It is not altogether clear whether these sheaths were used for contraceptive purposes, as a protection against diseases or just for some magical and spiritual rituals.
The first known published description of condoms dates back to the 16-th century. Gabrielle Fallopius was an author of the book in which he described the usefulness of "sheaths of linen" in the fight against the French disease (syphilis) that was widely spread across Europe.
The process of condoms production was rather complicated and time-consuming at that time. The blind guts of the animals had to be soaked in an alkaline solution, turned inside out, scraped, washed, blown up, dried and cut. Thats why condoms were very expensive and correspondingly available only to the elite. But even people who could afford buying condoms often reused them.
Alongside with their expensiveness and multiple reuses early condoms had many other drawbacks. They were coarse, clumsy and often had an unpleasant odor. They were aging too quickly and werent easy to use. Fitting a condom over the glans but under the foreskin or inserting it into the urethra wasnt particularly comfortable and practical.
Due to modern technologies and innovations (and in many aspects due to the discovery of rubber vulcanization) millions of condoms can be produced per day. Today you can find condoms that are different shapes, widths and length and can easily fit and suit anyone. Their effectiveness and safety are being thoroughly tested and proved by different organizations.
Nowadays condoms are considered to be the easiest and the cheapest method of male contraception. They are easy to get and easy to use, have few side-effects and serve not only as a means against unwanted pregnancy, but as a protection against sexually transmitted diseases as well.
Condoms are rather effective in protection against gonorrhea, genital herpes simplex, chancroid, syphilis, human papilloma virus, chlamydia and other unpleasant diseases that can be transmitted via sexual intercourse and have far-reaching consequences.
The role of condoms has enormously grown in the last decades, as it is known that these little things can greatly reduce the transmission of HIV/AIDS. Greatly means about 85% as compared to risk of unprotected intercourse.
Rather impressive number in our time of millions young people dying of AIDS, thousands of HIV positive newly-borns with a prospect not to reach their adolescence years and mothers watching their children suffer. Several dollars for a pack of condoms is a small price to pay for a healthy life. So why not to pay it at the proper time?
Lyudmyla
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