The barrier methods of contraception are the most ancient ones. The ancient Greek myth tells that the semen of King of Crete, Minos, who was the son of Zeus and Europe, was full of snakes and scorpions. One can just imagine the fatal effect caused by this dangerous mix to the numerous girlfriends of the king. That continued up to the time when … One of his lovers, the daughter of the servant, who had the name of Erecteus, got the idea to protect herself from the semen of the king with the urinary bladder of the goat. May be the condoms were invented in such a way, in XV BB.C.

The ancient Egyptians are also considered to be the inventors of the condom. The evidences of that may be the frescos dated by 1350 B.C., found in Karnack, picturing the men decorated with the nice hoods as the embellishments of the penis. The existence of the condom becomes even more evident in the Xth century  A.D., in Asia. In China it was made of silk saturated with the oil, in Japan — of tortoise-shell.

The history of the condom as it is started from the XVIth century, when Gabriel Fallopium, the surgeon and the professor of anatomy of Padua University, prepared the bag made of the flax, saturated with the extract of the astringent herbs, bensoin and wormwood. In his work destined to the prophylaxis of «French caries», that we call now «syphilis», he explained the reasonability of use of such condom for the prophylactic purposes.

Doctor Condom, the personal doctor of the King of England, Charles II, was the first to demonstrate the importance of the contraceptive function of the condom; he had invented the condom made of animal intestines. The prime importance of the invention was that it enabled to limit the quantity of the illegitimate children of the King; that could reach at that time the dozens.

Since the year of 1839, when the process of caoutchouc vulcanization was invented, the condom became the most close to the modern standards. The free sale of the condoms was prohibited after the First World War for the purposes of augmentation of population. But that was the international women movement who rose to protect it; they believed that the condom was the new form of freedom, the right «to have the children or not to have». And the condoms were returned into the free sale.

During the Second World War the soldiers used the condoms not only according to the prescribed manner, but also «in the battle», they put them on the gun point during the sea battles, and the seamen stored the food, the cigarettes and matches inside of them. The condom started to be recognized and popular, but just till the sale of the first hormonal tablet, before the year of 1961. It’s a pity that it became the symbol of the beginning and of the development of sexual revolution. At the beginning of the eighties the dominant part of the world believed that the invention of Doctor Condom went out of use. But the horror of the penalty for those years, passed without conscience, was slow and irrevocable; it made us to face to the drama of our time: the AIDS.

The appearance of AIDS was not only the cause of the renaissance of the condom as the unique remedy from this awful disease; it had also established the new requirements for the manufacturers. The quantity of the diseases transmitted during the sexual contact, is enormous in the world and it continues to grow each year. They include such dangerous diseases as the AIDS, syphilis, gonorrhoea, clamidiosis, mycoplasmosis, trichomoniasis, herpetic and papilloma virus infections… The consequences of these diseases are really painful as for the men, so as for the women.

When the AIDS virus was for the first time isolated by the French scientist, Luc Montagnier, and when the real virus sizes became known to the people, a lot of countries introduced the measures for the control of quality of the condoms, for the assurance of impermeability of the condoms for AIDS virus. The popularity of the condoms is actively growing now, as it has become evident: the barrier methods, primary the condom, are capable not only to protect from the non — desired pregnancy, but also to prevent the diseases transferred during the sexual contact.