What's considered hygienic can change quite a bit over time. The ancient Romans cleaned themselves with oil and a big hook, for example. In the 19th century, Americans believed a layer of dirt covering them served as a protective shield against illness. The trend toward cleanliness started with the advent of germ theory in the mid-19th century, but the hygiene business really caught on in the early 20th century, with all kinds of products that promised to make people smell better, look better, and be safer. Of course, not all of it was safe, and some of it was downright weird by today's standards. Here's what hygiene in America was like 100 years ago.
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00:00Did you know that radioactive soap was very popular a century ago, and people cleaned
00:05with Lysol… where? Keep watching to find out what other strange hygiene habits Americans
00:10had 100 years ago.
00:13It wasn't until 1888 that the first commercial deodorant hit the shelves, but it was less
00:17than ideal. It took another two decades or so for another, less acidic deodorant to be
00:22invented. But it wasn't until the 1920s that good old-fashioned marketing did some serious
00:28This new concoction was originally invented by a surgeon. It was meant to keep hands sweat-free.
00:33His daughter had a clever idea, though, and created a new type of deodorant. She named
00:37it Odor-Ono and tried selling it to people for their pits. It was initially a complete
00:42failure — until, that is, she hired a marketing team.
00:45Sales did all right, but it wasn't until 1919 that marketing realized what the problem was.
00:50People knew that there was a product out there that could stop body odor, but they just didn't
00:54know they needed it. So they kicked off a campaign against B.O., taking out a series
00:58of advertisements with the same message packaged differently.
01:01They implored women not to stink, or they'd drive away the men. It was the brainchild
01:05of a copywriter named James Young. He would write in his memoir that his suggestion that
01:10body odor was offensive did some serious damage to his own relationships with women. And while
01:14there was some serious outrage, Odor-Ono's sales rose 112% in that year. By 1929, it
01:20was a million-dollar company. By the end of the 1920s, they had successfully convinced
01:25American women that deodorant needed to be a part of the daily hygiene regimen.
01:30Even though the University of the Pacific School of Dentistry says that toothpicks have
01:33been used as far back as 5,000 years ago, it was only in the 1920s that humankind got
01:38a decently pleasant toothbrush.
01:41At the end of the 19th century, American toothbrushes were mostly made from bone handles and boar
01:45bristles. Though more modern toothbrushes existed by the turn of the century, by 1920,
01:50a few Americans who even had a toothbrush — about 20% of the population — had one
01:54that was imported from Japan. What about the dental hygiene of the other 80%? They were
01:59probably better off not brushing their teeth, as the brushes of the era were so stiff they
02:04could do more damage to gums than good to teeth.
02:07That's not really surprising, given that boar bristles are extremely rigid and come to a
02:11sharp point. Can you blame people for not wanting to brush with tiny spears? That's
02:16Not to say that people didn't care for their teeth. The 1920s saw the development of things
02:20like X-rays for teeth and the establishment of formal guidelines for dental schools. Many
02:25employers had dentists on contract and available to see the dental concerns of employees.
02:31It wasn't until the end of the 19th century that bathing became a fairly regular thing.
02:35A lot of America's hesitation was simply a lack of access to clean water. Bathhouses
02:40started being built in the 1890s, but it took a while for bathing to catch on.
02:44You can bathe in the next room.
02:46I'm fine.
02:47You, my friend, are very far from fine. You reek of old horse.
02:53As the U.S. rang in the Roaring Twenties, it's safe to say that bathing was commonplace,
02:57but soap was less so. Bathhouses had initially attracted customers by handing out soap. Cosmetic
03:03companies saw this trend and hopped on the bandwagon.
03:05With cosmetics companies stealing customers, people in the soap business found that they
03:09needed to convince consumers that they should use their product to get clean. So-called
03:13cosmetic cleansers were such a threat that Big Soap organized a trade association called
03:18the Association of American Soap and Glycerin Producers. They then created the Cleanliness
03:23Institute to teach the public why soap was better than, say, bathing with cold cream.
03:28Research from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock found the Institute's advertising,
03:32news releases, and hygiene materials ended up being a wildly important service to public
03:36health.
03:37Even schools started teaching children the importance of using soap, and by 1930 it was
03:42the norm.
03:43Today, people who are trying to cut down on how much plastic and packaging they use are
03:47discovering shampoo bars. But here's the surprising thing. A hundred years ago, it was the norm
03:52for washing hair.
03:53Liquid shampoo wasn't invented until the 1920s, and instead people used bars that were essentially
03:58cleaning ingredients compressed into a bar. It was used just like soap. Lather between
04:03the palms, massage into the hair and scalp, rinse. In some ways, it's actually easier
04:08to use than modern shampoo. It's much quicker to rinse the lather from a shampoo bar out
04:12of hair.
04:13The Independent Pharmacist says that a common alternative was using regular soap for shampoo,
04:18but that tended to leave a weird film. It wasn't until 1927 that a German chemist invented
04:23liquid shampoo. At the time, it was pretty standard to wash your hair once every few
04:28weeks. It took a while for the idea of liquid shampoo to make it to the States. In fact,
04:32Procter & Gamble didn't make their version until 1934.
04:37Menstruation has always been a bit of a taboo subject, and that was definitely true in the
04:411920s. It was in this same era that women suddenly had access to something that would
04:46revolutionize feminine hygiene forever — disposable sanitary pads. It's pretty fascinating how
04:51the whole thing came about. It started with the development of something called Cellucot.
04:55This material was originally used for bandages during World War I. Frontline nurses quickly
05:00realized they could be used for more than just absorbing the blood from war wounds.
05:04Kotex sold their first sanitary napkins in Chicago in 1919, but there was a huge problem.
05:09Female customers didn't want to tell male shop clerks what they needed. What followed
05:13was a massive advertising campaign emphasizing Kotex's reputation of being discreet. They
05:18began encouraging women to ask for them by name. After that, women had, for the first
05:22time, what was defined as a medically-sanctioned hygienic product to use. They were no longer
05:27forced to use whatever home solution they came up with.
05:30As the decade moved on, more and more women turned to disposable sanitary napkins for
05:34the first time. Not only were they more hygienic, but they were much more reliable as well.
05:39Good hygiene down below is just as important as it is up top, but that wasn't the case
05:44until incredibly recently. It was only about 100 years ago that America started using purpose-built
05:49toilet paper. Americans spent years wiping their nether regions with the Sears Robot
05:53catalog, even after the invention of what modern eyes would see as a perfectly acceptable
05:57toilet paper.
05:59Aloe-infused toilet wipes were invented way back in 1857, but they were considered medicinal.
06:04It took a long time to get the public on board with buying a product just for backslide cleanup.
06:09It was a genius marketing campaign from a popular paper company at the time that got
06:12people there.
06:13In 1928, the paper manufacturer introduced a new kind of paper that wasn't medicated.
06:19It was soft and would make cleanup a gentle sort of experience. It was called Charmin.
06:24Everyone squeezes new Charmin here.
06:27It does smell nice.
06:29So a century ago, Americans were just beginning to get used to using toilet paper regularly.
06:34If that's not weird enough, here's one final footnote. It wasn't until 1930 that a toilet
06:39paper hit the market that could be advertised as splinter-free. Now that's a marketing campaign.
06:45Just the smell of Lysol is enough to let someone know it's strong stuff, and is probably not
06:50something that's going to be kind to your body's soft tissues.
06:53Still, 100 years ago, women were using it as part of their feminine hygiene rituals.
06:58And here's the terrifying thing. Doctors knew this wasn't a good idea as early as 1911.
07:03That's when they saw 193 women suffer from Lysol poisoning and another five die from
07:07the effects of using Lysol.
07:09Keep in mind that this is a product that is used for killing ringworm, the flu virus,
07:14cholera, and for disinfecting bathrooms.
07:17Lysol was used throughout the 1920s and even into the 1930s, dubbed Lysol, as the perfect
07:21product to use in the upkeep of dainty feminine allure. Countless ads warned women that if
07:26they didn't spray some Lysol into their most private areas to stay fresh and clean, they
07:31were going to chase their men away.
07:33Ads often blamed women's failed marriages on bad hygiene, or lack thereof, and promoted
07:37it as being dual-purpose. Not only did they claim that Lysol cleaned a woman thoroughly,
07:42but it was also an effective means of birth control. It absolutely wasn't.
07:47By the 1890s, the big, bushy beards of the Civil War had given way to a more finely-groomed,
07:52carefully-managed style of facial hair. At the time, the only option men had for facial
07:56hair hygiene was a straight razor. It was that way for a long time, until about a hundred
08:00years ago.
08:01In 1904, a man with the unlikely name of King Gillette invented the safety razor, letting
08:06American men rely less on the barber and more on their own at-home routines.
08:11That was just the beginning, and by the 1920s, Jacob Schick made things even more efficient.
08:16Schick was living in Alaska when he decided he was going to overcome some major problems
08:20with safety razors. They were hard to reload, and anyone who didn't have water handy was
08:24out of luck. So he invented a dry-shaving, motorized razor that was inspired by the same
08:29mechanism that reloaded repeating rifles.
08:32Schick introduced something even more revolutionary to the landscape of male grooming than the
08:35simple safety razor. In 1928, he created the first electric razor. It took him just two
08:41years to sell a million of them, and they've been used to keep skin smooth and injury-free
08:45ever since.
08:47Hygiene and personal grooming go hand in hand, and a hundred years ago, the idea of what
08:51hair was acceptable for women began to change. It was around the turn of the century that
08:55removing hair was seen as hygienic.
08:58Body hair was considered masculine, and starting in the 1920s, something important was happening
09:03in women's fashion. Dresses were getting shorter, and sleeves were disappearing. Parts of the
09:08body that had been covered during the Victorian era were now on display to the world.
09:12Companies that were making newly invented safety razors to men realized they could market
09:16razors to women. Advertising campaigns made women feel shame about the hair growing on
09:21their legs and armpits. At the start of the decade, shaving legs was so uncommon that
09:26when one Kansas girl cut her leg, it made the national news.
09:29But it wasn't long before advertisers were condemning underarm and leg hair as one of
09:33the biggest embarrassments a woman could suffer. That meant it wasn't long before many were
09:38using all of the razors, blades, and creams that were flooding the market. By the 1940s,
09:43Harper's Bazaar declared,
09:44"...if we were dean of women, we'd levy a demerit on every hairy leg on campus."
09:49It wasn't long after Marie and Pierre Curie discovered radium that people became downright
09:53infatuated with the glow-in-the-dark properties of it. It was used for painting watch dials,
09:57sure, but according to Georgetown University, it was even used to make a radioactive energy
10:02drink that was all the rage during the 1920s.
10:05"...folks, get your bottle of radioactive water. Radical! It has the same effect on
10:11the human body as recharging electric batteries."
10:15Radium and, by extension, radioactivity, found its way into scores of hygiene products, too.
10:20Throughout the 1920s and into the 1940s, consumers were told that things like radioactive toothpaste,
10:25hair care products, and makeup were going to make them bigger, better, and stronger.
10:30Some of these products packed a massive punch, and surviving examples still set off Geiger
10:34counters. What kind of products? Radium hand cleaner boasted that
10:38"...it takes off everything but the skin."
10:40While radium emanation bath salts could be added to a daily bath solution to combat things
10:45like insomnia and relieve the pain of arthritis. There were also products like x-ray soap,
10:50which was advertised as being able to clean everything from clothes to cars.
10:55In 2021, one reporter spent a week following some of the cleaning routines described in
10:59the 1920s-era Good Housekeeping book on The Business of Housekeeping. Once she started
11:04it, it became clear that a 1920s homemaker had her work cut out for her. Every day was
11:08filled with scores of chores to keep the house as spick and span.
11:13The routines included things like washing dishes three times a day, dusting, and mopping.
11:17But it also involved setting the table and serving meals, bumping pillows and cushions,
11:22and making sure there were fresh flowers in all the cases. But that's not all. Women also
11:26aired out blankets and sheets, polished mirrors and silverware, and made sure to clean guest
11:31bedrooms, even if there were no guests in sight.
11:33After a week, the verdict was that it was incredibly exhausting. The meal-making, the
11:38laundry, the twice-weekly change in pillowcases, and the cleaning under things that are better
11:42just left unmoved were nearly impossible to keep on top of. It was by Wednesday that she
11:47declared,
11:48"...the novelty of this project had officially worn off."