April 30th, 2021 -- by Bacchus
Practice Safe Kissing
I don’t have a source for this, but a vintage magazine, surely. The hygienic kissing screen never caught on, for which we all are, I do not doubt, suitably grateful:
It does rather seem to prefigure the latex dental dam, which enjoyed (if I may use the word loosely) a certain currency among sex educators for a time. (How broadly it was actually adopted is a fact I don’t possess.)
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The “Popular Science Monthly” rather gives it away. February 1920 edition:
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=umn.31951t00080801t&view=1up&seq=122&q1=germless
The first mention I found was in May 1910, in the New York Tribune. The device was called the Kissinette and was invented by Professor Harry Butler, who looks as though he is about to sneeze. 300 were sold at their unveiling. Professor Butler suggested that the device could add to the pleasure of kissing:
“The threads of the gauze create a vibration which will add to the thrill of the kiss and will I am sure be something intense between true lovers.”
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030214/1910-05-15/ed-1/seq-53/
This device was also mentioned in February 1912 in “The Day Book”, a newspaper in Chicago. A little fancier than before:
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045487/1912-02-19/ed-1/seq-11/
“Might as well kiss through a pane of glass as though a screen”
A previous mention of germless kissing is even more hilarious.
In 1908, it was suggested that the lips be painted with collodion as a barrier. Collodion is nitrocellulose in an ether or alcohol base, literally explosive and a little narcotic. Also, assumes no open mouths.
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015010955956&view=1up&seq=203&q1=germless
It was reported in 1903:
“To Enforce a Germless Kiss
St. Paul, Jan. 30.- Abill has been introduced in the Minnesota legislature declaring that it shall be unlawful for one person to kiss another unless he can prove he is free from contagious or infectious diseases. The bill states that the certificate of a physician declaring a person to have a weak heart shall constitute a bar to kissing, and violation of the bill is accounted a misdemeanor and is punished by a fine of from $1 to $5 for each offense.”
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn89066489/1903-02-05/ed-1/seq-4/
One journalist decried that bill as “freak legislation”
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn92053934/1903-02-26/ed-1/seq-4/
It *did* seem like a pretty safe bet! Thanks for hunting down all the related stories.
If what commenter “Hug” said is taken into account:
“…the threads of the gauze create a vibration which will add to the thrill of the kiss and will I am sure be something intense between true lovers.”, then perhaps the real intention of the device was to be placed over the pudenda prior to cunnilingus. …and indeed the device actually COULD add to the pleasure of kissing…
There’s the old sports aphorism that a tie game is like kissing your sibling through a screen door.
But, optimistically, Dr. Whiplash’s guess that the vibration might come in handy does sound better.