From Surgical Suite to Fresh Breath: The History of Listerine®

While the product Listerine has become ubiquitous with bad breath, this wasn't always the case. Its history is both a study of medicine and marketing that involves a long list of participants. Having its roots in the development of antiseptic surgery its success as a “health” product is an early example of a pharmaceutical company utilizing direct to consumer advertising. Even more astounding is how the Lambert Pharmaceutical Company created a condition more than they created a product. In a paper presented to the surgical section of the British Medical Association in Dublin on August 9th, 1867 physician and surgeon Dr. Joseph Lister explained his principle of the germ theory and the use of carbolic acid. He stated that the chemicals “…appear to exercise a peculiarly destructive influence upon low forms of life, and hence is the most powerful antiseptic with which we are presently acquainted.” Lister went on to explain in detail his methodology of first attempting to destroy microorganisms (referred to as germs) that may have been introduced into the wound at the time of injury as well as postoperatively. While Lister would eventually go on to become regarded as the father of antiseptic surgery it would take many years for the profession of medicine to fully accept his ideas, this was especially true in the United States. In one of his attempts to enlighten US surgeons, Lister made a presentation at the Philadelphia Exposition in 1876. Among those in attendance, that day was Dr. Joseph Joshua Lawrence, a surgeon and Robert Johnson a pharmacist. Both men would go on to revolutionize the market for antiseptic oral hygiene in the United States. “But when it has been shown by the researches of Pasteur that the septic property of the atmosphere depended not on the oxygen or any gaseous constituent, but on minute organisms suspended in it, which owed their energy to their vitality, it occurred to me that decomposition in the injured part might be avoided without excluding the air, by applying as a dressing some material capable of destroying the life of the floating particles. Upon this principle, I have based a practice.” Joseph Lister, address to the British Medical Association in Dublin in 1887: [1]