Did you know that radioactive soap was very popular a century ago?
And people cleaned with Lysol…where?
Keep watching to find out what other strange hygiene habits Americans had 100 years ago.
It wasn't until 1888 that the first commercial deodorant hit the shelves, but it was less
than ideal.
It took another two decades or so for another, less acidic deodorant to be invented.
But it wasn't until the 1920s that good old-fashioned marketing did some serious magic.
This new concoction was originally invented by a surgeon.
It was meant to keep hands sweat-free.
His daughter had a clever idea though, and created a new type of deodorant.
She named it Odorono and tried selling it to people for their pits.
It was initially a complete failure, until, that is, she hired a marketing team.
Sales did alright, but it wasn't until 1919 that marketing realized what the problem was.
People knew that there was a product out there that could stop body odor, but they just didn't
know they needed it.
So they kicked off a campaign against B.O., taking out a series of advertisements with
the same message packaged differently.
They implored women not to stink, or they'd drive away the men.
It was the brainchild of a copywriter named James Young.
He would write in his memoir that his suggestion that body odor was offensive did some serious
damage to his own relationships with women.
And while there was some serious outrage, Odorono sales rose 112% in that year.
By 1929, it was a million-dollar company.
By the end of the 1920s, they had successfully convinced American women that deodorant needed
to be a part of the daily hygiene regimen.
Even though the University of the Pacific's
School of Dentistry says that toothpicks have been used as far back as 5,000 years ago,
it was only in the 1920s that humankind got a decently pleasant toothbrush.
At the end of the 19th century, American toothbrushes were mostly made from bone handles and boar
bristles.
Though more modern toothbrushes existed by the turn of the century, by 1920, the few
Americans who even had a toothbrush (about 20% of the population) had one that was imported
from Japan.
What about the dental hygiene of the other 80%? They were probably better off not brushing
their teeth, as the brushes of the era were so stiff, they could do more damage to gums
than good to teeth.
That's not really surprising given that boar bristles are extremely rigid and come to a
sharp point.
Can you blame people for not wanting to brush with tiny spears?
That's not to say that people didn't care for their teeth.
The 1920s saw the development of things like x-rays for teeth, and the establishment of
formal guidelines for dental schools.
Many employers had dentists on contract and available to see the dental concerns of employees.
It wasn't until the end of the 19th century
that bathing became a fairly regular thing.
A lot of America's hesitation was simply a lack of access to clean water.
Bathhouses started being built in the 1890s, but it took a while for bathing to catch on.
"You can bathe in the next room."
"I'm fine."
"You, my friend, are very far from fine.
You reek of old horse."
As the U.S. rang in the Roaring Twenties, it's safe to say that bathing was commonplace,
but soap was less so.
Bathhouses had initially attracted customers by handing out soap.
Cosmetic companies saw this trend and hopped on the bandwagon.
With cosmetics companies stealing customers, people in the soap business found that they
needed to convince consumers that they should use their product to get clean.
So-called "cosmetic cleansers" were such a threat that Big Soap organized a trade association
called the Association of American Soap and Glycerine Producers.
They then created the Cleanliness Institute to teach the public why soap was better than,
say, bathing with cold cream.
Research from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock found the Institute's advertising,
news releases, and hygiene materials ended up being a wildly important service to public
health.
Even schools started teaching children the importance of using soap, and by 1930, it
was the norm.
Today, people who are trying to cut down on
how much plastic and packaging they use are discovering shampoo bars, but here's the surprising
thing: 100 years ago, it was the norm for washing hair.
Liquid shampoo wasn't invented until the 1920s, and instead, people used bars that were essentially
cleaning ingredients compressed into a bar.
It was used just like soap.
Lather between the palms, massage into the hair and scalp, then rinse.
In some ways, it's actually easier to use than modern shampoo.
It's much quicker to rinse the lather from a shampoo bar out of hair.
The Independent Pharmacist says that a common alternative was using regular soap for shampoo,
but that tended to leave a weird film.
It wasn't until 1927 that a German chemist invented liquid shampoo.
At the time, it was pretty standard to wash your hair once every few weeks.
It took a while for the idea of liquid shampoo to make it to the states.
In fact, Procter & Gamble didn't make their version until 1934.
Menstruation has always been a bit of a taboo
subject, and that was definitely true in the 1920s.
It was in this same era that women suddenly had access to something that would revolutionize
feminine hygiene forever: disposable sanitary pads.
It's pretty fascinating how the whole thing came about.
It started with the development of something called Cellucotton.
This material was originally used for bandages during World War I. Frontline nurses quickly
realized they could be used for more than just absorbing the blood from war wounds.
Kotex sold their first sanitary napkins in Chicago in 1919, but there was a huge problem:
Female customers didn't want to tell male shop clerks what they needed.
What followed was a massive advertising campaign emphasizing Kotex's reputation of being discreet.
They began encouraging women to "Ask for them by name."
After that, women had, for the first time, what was defined as a "medically sanctioned,
'hygienic' product" to use.
They were no longer forced to use whatever home solution they came up with.
As the decade moved on, more and more women turned to disposable sanitary napkins for
the first time.
Not only were they more hygienic, but they were much more reliable as well.
Good hygiene down below is just as important
as it is up top, but that wasn't the case until incredibly recently.
It was only about 100 years ago that America started using purpose-built toilet paper.
Americans spent years wiping their nether regions with the Sears Roebuck catalog, even
after the invention of what modern eyes would see as a perfectly acceptable toilet paper.
Aloe-infused toilet wipes were invented way back in 1857, but they were considered medicinal.
It took a long time to get the public on board with buying a product just for backside cleanup.
It was a genius marketing campaign from a popular paper company of the time that got
people there.
In 1928, the paper manufacturer introduced a new kind of paper that wasn't medicated.
It was soft and would make clean-up a gentle sort of experience.
It was called Charmin.
"Everyone squeezes new Charmin.
Here!"
"It does smell nice.
So soft!"
So, a century ago, Americans were just beginning to get used to using toilet paper regularly.
If that's not weird enough, here's one final footnote.
It wasn't until 1930 that a toilet paper hit the market that could be advertised as "splinter-free."
Now that’s a marketing campaign.
Just the smell of Lysol is enough to let someone
know it's strong stuff, and is probably not something that's going to be kind to your
body's soft tissues.
Still, 100 years ago, women were using it as part of their feminine hygiene rituals.
And here's the terrifying thing: doctors knew this wasn't a good idea as early as 1911.
That's when they saw 193 women suffer from Lysol poisoning and another five die from
the effects of using Lysol.
Keep in mind that this is a product that is used for killing ringworm, the flu virus,
cholera, and for disinfecting bathrooms.
Advertisers throughout the 1920s, and even into the 1930s, dubbed Lysol as the perfect
product to use in the upkeep of "dainty feminine allure."
Countless ads warned women that if they didn't spray some Lysol into their most private areas,
to stay fresh and clean, they were going to chase their men away.
Ads often blamed women's hygiene, or lack thereof, on failed marriages, and promoted
it as being dual-purpose.
Not only did they claim that Lysol cleaned a woman thoroughly, but it was also an effective
means of birth control.
It absolutely wasn't.
By the 1890s, the big, bushy beards of the
Civil War had given way to a more finely groomed, carefully managed style of facial hair.
At the time, the only option men had for facial hair hygiene was a straight razor.
It was that way for a long time, until about 100 years ago.
In 1904, a man with the unlikely name of King Gillette invented the safety razor, letting
American men rely less on the barber and more on their own at-home routines.
That was just the beginning, and by the 1920s, Jacob Schick made things even more efficient.
Schick was living in Alaska when he decided he was going to overcome some major problems
with safety razors.
They were hard to reload, and anyone who didn't have water handy was out of luck.
So, he invented a dry-shaving motorized razor that was inspired by the same mechanism that
reloaded repeating rifles.
Schick introduced something even more revolutionary to the landscape of male grooming than the
simple safety razor.
In 1928, he created the first electric razor.
It took him just two years to sell a million of them, and they've been used to keep skin
smooth and injury-free ever since.
Hygiene and personal grooming go hand-in-hand,
and 100 years ago, the idea of what hair was acceptable for women began to change.
It was around the turn of the century that removing hair was seen as hygienic.
Body hair was considered masculine, and starting in the 1920s, something important was happening
in women's fashion.
Dresses were getting shorter, and sleeves were disappearing.
Parts of the body that had been covered during the Victorian era were now on display to the
world.
Companies that were marking newly invented safety razors to men realized they could market
razors to women.
Advertising campaigns made women feel shame about the hair growing on their legs and armpits.
At the start of the decade, shaving legs was so uncommon that when one Kansas girl cut
her leg, it made the national news.
But it wasn't long before advertisers were condemning underarm and leg hair as one of
the biggest embarrassments a woman could suffer.
That meant it wasn't long before many were using all of the razors, blades, and creams
that were flooding the market.
By the 1940s, Harper's Bazaar declared: "If we were dean of women, we'd levy a demerit
on every hairy leg on campus."
It wasn't long after Marie and Pierre Curie
discovered radium that people became downright infatuated with the glow-in-the-dark properties
of it.
It was used for painting watch dials, sure, but according to Georgetown University, it
was even used to make a radioactive energy drink that was all the rage during the 1920s.
"Folks, get your bottle of radioactive water, Radithor!
It has the same effect on the human body as recharging electric batteries!"
Radium, and by extension, radioactivity, found its way into scores of hygiene products, too.
Throughout the 1920s, and into the 1940s, consumers were told that things like radioactive
toothpaste, hair care products, and makeup were going to make them bigger, better, and
stronger.
Some of these products packed a massive punch and surviving examples still set off Geiger
counters.
What kind of products?
Radium Hand Cleaner boasted that it "Takes Off Everything But the Skin."
While Radium Emanation Bath salts could be added to a daily bath solution to combat things
like insomnia and relieve the pain of arthritis.
There were also products like X-Ray Soap, which was advertised as being able to clean
everything from clothes to cars.
In 2021, one reporter spent a week following
some of the cleaning routines described in the 1920s-era Good Housekeeping's Book on
The Business of Housekeeping.
Once she started, it became clear that a 1920s homemaker had her work cut out for her.
Every day was filled with scores of chores to keep the house as spic-and-span.
The routines included things like washing dishes three times a day, dusting, and mopping.
But it also involved setting the table and serving meals, plumping pillows and cushions,
and making sure there were fresh flowers in all the cases.
But that’s not all.
Women also aired out blankets and sheets, polished mirrors and silverware, and made
sure to clean guest bedrooms even if there were no guests in sight.
After a week, the verdict was that it was incredibly exhausting.
The meal-making, the laundry, the twice-weekly changing of pillowcases, and the cleaning
under things that are better just left unmoved were nearly impossible to keep on top of.
It was by Wednesday that she declared: "The novelty of this project had officially
worn off."
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