Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things (48 page)

There was another popular cold remedy, but one potentially more dangerous. Physicians recommended, with caution, that children suffering from the croup or a cold inhale hot herbal vapors. These temporarily opened the nasal passages while a child’s head was over the steam, but many a child (and adult) received facial burns from overly hot water. Before gas and electric stoves would provide a measured and steady source of energy to
boil water, coal or wood fires could abruptly vary in intensity, producing a sudden geyser of scalding steam.

Many a druggist sought to produce a skin-tingling, sinus-opening ointment that combined the best aspects of plasters and vapors with none of their drawbacks. For Lunsford Richardson, a druggist from Selma, North Carolina, two events occurred that led him to the perfect product. The first was the popularity of petroleum jelly as a safe, neutral base for salves and cosmetics. The second was the introduction in America of menthol, a waxy, crystalline alcohol extract from oil of peppermint, which released a pungent vapor.

Menthol had first caught the public’s attention in 1898 in the form of a sore-muscle balm named Ben-Gay. Developed by, and named after, a French pharmacist, Jules Bengué, the product combined menthol’s heat-producing effects with an analgesic pain reliever, salicylate of methyl, in a base of lanolin. Touted in Europe and America as a remedy for gout, rheumatoid arthritis, and neuralgia, Bengué’s balm was also reported to clear the sinuses during a head cold.

Richardson listened to testimonials for Ben-Gay from his own customers. In 1905, he blended menthol with other ingredients from the drugstore shelf into a base of petroleum jelly, producing Richardson’s Croup and Pneumonia Cure Salve, a forehead and chest rub. Vaporized by body heat, the chemicals opened blocked air passages at the same time they stimulated blood circulation through skin contact. That year, Richardson could not work fast enough to fill orders from cold sufferers and other druggists.

Searching for a catchier name for his already popular product, Richardson turned to his brother-in-law, a physician named Joshua Vick. It was in Vick’s drugstore that Richardson had begun his career in pharmacology, and it was in Vick’s backroom laboratory that Richardson concocted his vapor rub. He named the product in honor of his relative and mentor.

Richardson advertised in newspapers, with coupons that could be redeemed for a trial jar of Vick’s VapoRub. And he persuaded the U.S. Post Office to allow him to institute a new mailing practice, one that has since kept home mailboxes full, if not overflowing: Advertisements for Vick’s VapoRub were addressed merely to “Boxholder,” the equivalent of today’s “Occupant.” Before then, all mail had to bear the receiver’s name.

Sales were strong. Then a tragic twist of fate caused them to skyrocket.

In the spring of 1918, a flu epidemic erupted in U.S. military bases. It was carried by troops to France, then to Spain, where the virus became more virulent, earning it the name Spanish Flu. It spread to China. By the fall of that year, an even deadlier strain broke out in Russia.

The death toll was enormous. The flu killed one half of one percent of the entire population of the United States and England, 60 percent of the Eskimos in Nome, Alaska. In just six weeks, 3.1 percent of the U.S. recruits at Camp Sherman died. Ocean liners docked with up to 7 percent fewer passengers than had embarked. The epidemic was characterized aptly by
what fourteenth-century Italian author Giovanni Boccaccio said of an earlier scourge: “How many valiant men, how many fair ladies, breakfasted with their kinsfolk and that same night supped with their ancestors in the other world.”

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 the 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.