World War I had taken four years to claim the lives of nine million military personnel. The 1918 pandemic, in one year, killed twenty-five million people worldwide, making it history’s worst plague.
Not surprisingly, the influenza drove up the sales of all kinds of cold medications. Aspirin, cough syrups and drops, and decongestants were, of course, ineffective against the flu bug, which mysteriously vanished in 1919, perhaps having mutated and passed into swine. But these drug sales, as well as those of Vick’s VapoRub, set new industry records. Vick’s, in 1918, broke the million-dollar mark.
Deodorants: 3500 B.C., Near East
The problem of body odor is ancient, as are man’s attempts to solve it. From the dawn of written history, 5,500 years ago in Sumer, every major civilization has left a record of its efforts to produce deodorants.
The early Egyptians recommended following a scented bath with an underarm application of perfumed oils. They developed special citrus and cinnamon preparations that would not turn rancid in the semitropical climate and thus be themselves offensive. Through experimentation, the Egyptians discovered that the removal of underarm hair significantly diminished body odor. Centuries later, scientists would understand why: hair greatly increases the surface area on which bacteria, odorless themselves, can live, populate, die, and decompose to offend.
Both the Greeks and the Romans derived their perfumed deodorants from Egyptian formulas. In fact, throughout most of recorded history, the only effective deodorant—aside from regular washing—was perfume. And it merely masked one scent with another. For a time.
The link between sweat and odor was to be more clearly understood once the sweat glands were discovered in the nineteenth century.
Scientists learned that human perspiration is produced by two kinds of sweat glands, the apocrine and the eccrine. The first structures exist over the entire body’s surface at birth, giving babies their distinctive scent. Most of these glands gradually disappear, except for those concentrated in the armpit, around the anus, and circling the breast nipples. The glands are relatively inactive during childhood, but begin to function in puberty, switched on by the sex hormones. In old age, they may wither and atrophy.
Most of the body’s sweat, though, is produced by the eccrine glands, abundant over the body’s surface. Eccrine sweat is copious—and cooling. In extreme heat, and with high water intake, human subjects have been measured to secrete up to three gallons of sweat in twenty-four hours.
The eccrine glands also function in response to nervousness, fever, stress, and the eating of spicy foods. And sweat caused by emotional stress is particularly perfusive in the armpits, on the palms of the hands, and on the soles of the feet. But most perspiration evaporates or is absorbed effectively by clothing.
From Egyptian scented oils to Mum, the first modern antiperspirant, the search for an effective deodorant spanned five millennia.
It is because the armpits remain warm and moist that they create a hospitable environment for bacteria. Convincing scientific evidence shows that armpit odor arises mainly, though not exclusively, from bacteria that thrive in secretions of the apocrine glands. One study collected fresh human apocrine sweat and showed that it was odorless. Kept for six hours at room temperature (with bacteria multiplying and dying), it acquired its characteristic odor. When sweat from the same source was refrigerated, no odor developed.
Thus, ancient to modern perfumed deodorizers never tackled the source of the problem: persistent underarm moisture. Deprived of moisture, by an “antiperspirant,” bacteria cannot multiply.
Antiperspirants: 1888, United States
The first product marketed specifically to stem underarm moisture, and thus odor, was Mum, introduced in 1888. The formulation used a compound of zinc in a cream base. No scientist then, and none now, really understands how certain chemicals such as zinc thwart the production of sweat. Nonetheless, Mum worked, and its popularity in America convinced drug companies that a vast market existed for antiperspirants.
In 1902, Everdry debuted, followed in 1908 by Hush. These were the first antiperspirants to use another drying compound, aluminum chloride, which is found in most modern formulations.
For many years, Americans remained so sensitive to the issue of antiperspirants that they asked for them in drugstores with the same hushed confidentiality with which they requested prophylactics. The first antiperspirant to boldly speak its name with national magazine advertising, in 1914, bore the echoic name Odo-Ro-No. It claimed to remedy excessive perspiration, keeping women “clean and dainty.” Deodorant advertisements that followed also emphasized dryness, though none mentioned what dryness actually prevented.
Then, in 1919, the pioneering Odo-Ro-No again led the way. For the first time, a deodorant ad asserted that “B.O.” existed, and that it was socially shocking and offensive.
Amazingly, during these early days, antiperspirants were advertised exclusively to and used mainly by women, who considered them as essential as soap. It was not until the 1930s that companies began to target the male market.
After nearly a hundred years of studying the action of antiperspirants, how do scientists suspect they work?
One popular theory holds that “drying” elements such as aluminum and zinc penetrate a short distance into the sweat ducts. There they act as corks, blocking the release of water. Pressure mounts in the ducts, and through a biofeedback mechanism, the pressure itself stops further sweating.
Unfortunately, antiperspirants act only on the eccrine glands, not on the apocrine glands, the principal culprits in causing body odor. This is why no antiperspirant is effective for extended periods of time. The best routine for combating underarm odor combines the timeless custom of washing, with the ancient Egyptian practice of shaving underarm hair, and the application of a modern antiperspirant: something old, something borrowed, and something new.
Antacids: 3500 B.C., Sumer
Considering his largely uncooked diet, early man may have suffered more severe indigestion than people do today. We know that from the time people began to record their thoughts on clay tablets, they consulted physicians for comfort from stomach upset. The earliest remedies, found among the Sumerians, included milk, peppermint leaves, and carbonates.
What Sumerian physicians had discovered by trial and error was that alkaline substances neutralize the stomach’s natural acid. Today’s antacids work by offering the positively charged ions in the stomach’s hydrochloric acid negative, neutralizing ions. This, in turn, inhibits the release of pepsin, another potent component of the digestive juice, which can be highly irritating to the stomach’s lining.
The Sumerians’ most effective antacid was baking soda, or sodium bicarbonate (also known as bicarbonate of soda). For centuries, it served as a major ingredient in a host of homemade stomach remedies. The only thing that has somewhat diminished its use in commercial antacids today is the link between sodium intake and hypertension.
Pure baking soda’s first significant brand-name competitor appeared in 1873: Phillips’ Milk of Magnesia. Created by a former candlemaker turned chemist, Charles Phillips of Glenbrook, Connecticut, it combined a powdered antacid with the laxative magnesia. The product, taken in small doses, won immediate acceptance as a soothing remedy for stomach discomfort.
Alka-Seltzer: 1931, United States
The Alka-Seltzer story began in the winter of 1928, when Hub Beardsley, president of the Dr. Miles Laboratories, visited the offices of a local newspaper in Elkhart, Indiana. There was a severe flu epidemic that year. Many of Beardsley’s own employees were out sick. But Beardsley learned that no one on the newspaper’s staff had missed a day of work as the result of influenza. The paper’s editor explained that at the first hint of a cold symptom, he dosed staff members with a combination of aspirin and baking soda.
Beardsley was impressed. Both medications were ancient, but their combination was novel. Since his laboratories specialized in home-medicine-chest remedies, he decided to test t
he formula. He asked his chief chemist, Maurice Treneer, to devise an attractive new tablet. Of course, what Treneer created—the pill that went “plop, plop, fizz, fizz” —was more novel than the combination of aspirin and baking soda, and the gimmick was instrumental in popularizing the product.
Beardsley took a supply of the experimental tablets with him on a Mediterranean cruise. His wife reported that they cured her headaches. Beardsley himself found they soothed the ravages of excessive shipboard dining and drinking. And fellow passengers who tried the tablets claimed they cured seasickness.
The fizzing tablet, which prompted a hung-over W. C. Fields to joke, “Can’t anyone do something about that racket!” bowed in 1931, during the Depression. Radio promotion was heavy. But Alka-Seltzer’s sales really skyrocketed in 1933, when Americans emerged parched from the dry spell of Prohibition.
Ironically, one of Alka-Seltzer’s original two ingredients, aspirin, is a strong stomach irritant for many people. This awareness caused Miles Laboratories to introduce an aspirin-free tablet called Alka-2 Antacid in the mid-1970s.
Today a wide variety of non-sodium, non-aspirin antacids neutralize stomach acid. A glance at the medicine chest shelf will reveal that the modern components are aluminum, calcium, bismuth, magnesium, and phosphates, and the one ancient ingredient is dried milk solids.
Cough Drops: 1000 B.C., Egypt
A cough’s main purpose is to clear the air passage of inhaled foreign matter, chemical irritants, or, during a head cold, excessive bodily secretions. The coughing reflex is part voluntary, part involuntary, and drugs that reduce the frequency and intensity of coughs are called cough suppressors or, technically, antitussives.
Many of these modern suppressor chemicals—like the narcotic codeine—act in the brain to depress the activity of its cough center, reducing the urge to cough. Another group, of older suppressors, acts to soothe and relax the coughing muscles in the throat. This is basically the action of the oldest known cough drops, produced for Egyptian physicians by confectioners three thousand years ago.
It was in Egypt’s New Kingdom, during the Twentieth Dynasty, that confectioners produced the first hard candies. Lacking sugar—which would not arrive in the region for many centuries—Egyptian candymakers began with honey, altering its flavor with herbs, spices, and citrus fruits. Sucking on the candies was found to relieve coughing. The Egyptian ingredients were not all that different from those found in today’s sugary lozenges; nor was the principle by which they operated: moistening an irritated dry throat.
The throat-soothing candy underwent numerous minor variations in different cultures. Ingredients became the distinguishing factor. Elm bark, eucalyptus oil, peppermint oil, and horehound are but a few of the ancient additives. But not until the nineteenth century did physicians develop drugs that addressed the source of coughing: the brain. And these first compounds that depressed the brain’s cough reflex were opiates.
Morphine, an alkaloid of opium, which is the dried latex of unripe poppy blossoms, was identified in Germany in 1805. Toward the close of the century, in 1898, chemists first produced heroin (diacetylmorphine), a simple morphine derivative. Both agents became popular and, for a time, easily available cough suppressants. A 1903 advertisement touted “Glyco-Heroin” as medical science’s latest “Respiratory Sedative.”
But doctors’ increasing awareness of the dangers of dependency caused them to prescribe the drugs less and less. Today a weaker morphine derivative, codeine (methylmorphine), continues to be used in suppressing serious coughs. Since high doses of morphine compounds cause death by arresting respiration, it is not hard to understand how they suppress coughing.
Morphine compounds opened up an entirely new area of cough research. And pharmacologists have successfully altered opiate molecules to produce synthetic compounds that suppress a cough with less risk of inducing a drug euphoria or dependency.
Turn of the century remedies: Throat atomizer (top), nasal model; various lozenges for coughs, hoarseness, halitosis, and constipation; syringe, for when tablets fail.
But these sophisticated remedies are reserved for treating serious, life-threatening coughs and are available only by prescription. Millions of cold sufferers every winter rely on the ancient remedy of the cough drop. In America, two of the earliest commercial products, still popular today, appeared during the heyday of prescribing opiate suppressors.
Smith Brothers. Aside from Abraham Lincoln, the two hirsute brothers who grace the box of Smith Brothers Cough Drops are reputed to be the most reproduced bearded faces in America. The men did in fact exist, and they were brothers. Andrew (on the right of the box, with the longer beard) was a good-natured, free-spending bachelor; William was a philanthropist and an ardent prohibitionist who forbade ginger ale in his home because of its suggestive alcoholic name.
In 1847, their father, James Smith, a candymaker, moved the family from St. Armand, Quebec, to Poughkeepsie, New York, and opened a restaurant. It was a bitter winter, and coughs and colds were commonplace. One day, a restaurant customer in need of cash offered James Smith the formula for what he claimed was a highly effective cough remedy. Smith paid five dollars for the recipe, and at home, employing his candymaking skills, he produced a sweet hard medicinal candy.
As Smith’s family and friends caught colds, he dispensed his cough lozenges. By the end of the winter, word of the new remedy had spread to towns along the wind-swept Hudson River. In 1852, a Poughkeepsie newspaper carried the Smiths’ first advertisement: “All afflicted with hoarseness, coughs, or colds should test [the drops’] virtues, which can be done without the least risk.”
Success spawned a wave of imitators: the “Schmitt Brothers”; the “Smythe Sisters”; and even another “Smith Brothers,” in violation of the family’s copyright. In 1866, brothers William and Andrew, realizing the family needed a distinctive, easily recognizable trademark, decided to use their own stern visages—not on the now-familiar box but on the large glass bowls kept on drugstore counters, from which the drops were dispensed. At that time, most candies were sold from counter jars.
In 1872, the Smith brothers designed the box that bore—and bears—their pictures. The first factory-filled candy package ever developed in America, it launched a trend in merchandising candies and cough drops. A confectioner from Reading, Pennsylvania, William Luden, improved on that packaging a few years later when he introduced his own amber-colored, menthol-flavored Luden’s Cough Drops. Luden’s innovation was to line the box with waxed paper to preserve the lozenges’ freshness and flavor.
As cold sufferers today open the medicine chest for Tylenol, NyQuil, or Contac, in the 1880s millions of Americans with sore throats and coughs reached for drops by the Smith brothers or Luden. William and Andrew Smith acquired the lifelong nicknames “Trade” and “Mark,” for on the cough drop package “trademark” was divided, each half appearing under a brother’s picture. The Smiths lived to see production of their cough drops soar from five pounds to five tons a day.
Suntan Lotion: 1940s, United States
Suntan and sunscreen lotions are modern inventions. The suntanning industry did not really begin until World War II, when the government needed a skin cream to protect GIs stationed in the Pacific from severe sunburns. And, too, the practice of basking in the sun until the body is a golden bronze color is largely a modern phenomenon.
Throughout history, people of many cultures took great pains to avoid skin darkening from sun exposure. Opaque creams and ointments, similar to modern zinc oxide, were used in many Western societies; as was the sun-shielding parasol. Only common field workers acquired suntans; white skin was a sign of high station.
In America, two factors contributed to bringing about the birth of tanning. Until the 1920s, most people, living inland, did not have access to beaches. It was only when railroads began carrying Americans in large numbers to coastal resorts that ocean bathing became a popular pastime. In those days, bathing wear covered so much flesh that suntan
preparations would have been pointless. (See “Bathing Suit,” page 321.) Throughout the ’30s, as bathing suits began to reveal increasingly more skin, it became fashionable to bronze that skin, which, in turn, introduced the real risk of burning.
At first, manufacturers did not fully appreciate the potential market for sunning products, especially for sunscreens. The prevailing attitude was that a bather, after acquiring sufficient sun exposure, would move under an umbrella or cover up with clothing. But American soldiers, fighting in the scorching sun of the Philippines, working on aircraft carrier decks, or stranded on a raft in the Pacific, could not duck into the shade. Thus, in the early 1940s, the government began to experiment with sun-protecting agents.
One of the most effective early agents turned out to be red petrolatum. It is an inert petroleum by-product, the residue that remains after gasoline and home heating oil are extracted from crude oil. Its natural red color, caused by an intrinsic pigment, is what blocks the sun’s burning ultraviolet rays. The Army Air Corps issued red petrolatum to wartime fliers in case they should be downed in the tropics.
One physician who assisted the military in developing the sunscreen was Dr. Benjamin Green. Green believed there was a vast, untapped commercial market for sunning products. After the war, he parlayed the sunscreen technology he had helped develop into a creamy, pure-white suntan lotion scented with the essence of jasmine. The product enabled the user to achieve a copper-colored skin tone, which to Green suggested a name for his line of products. Making its debut on beaches in the 1940s, Coppertone helped to kick off the bronzing of America.
Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things Page 34