07 November 2010

Condoms made from fish swim bladders

This set of 110-year-old condoms, made from the swim bladders of fish, are up for auction in Vienna. Delightfully, they seem to have been meant to be reusable, as evidenced by the former owner's careful tally of how many times each condom had been used. It looks as though you were only supposed to reuse 10 times.
The tally 10/9/8/7... is faintly visible on the red lining of the box, magnified here.

Discovery credit to Dinosaurs and Robots, via BoingBoing.

2 comments:

  1. bigjohn756November 7, 2010 at 10:05 PM

    Like lambskins, these are probably OK for contraception, but maybe not good enough to prevent all STDs, especially HIV.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ivor NadirNovember 10, 2017 at 1:53 PM

    I don't think there was much HIV around in 1887.

    ReplyDelete