Kilmer House

With Mother’s Day coming up in the U.S. on May 9th, Kilmer House would like to salute all of the Moms throughout our history and in our present.  This is the first in a series of three Mother’s Day posts that talk about some of our history that is connected to mothers.  One of the ways Johnson & Johnson supported mothers starting in the 1890s was through the manufacture of maternity kits, designed to insure safe childbirth for the mother and baby.

Today, there are countless books, websites, online communities and classes for expectant parents to prepare them for the birth of a child.  And in most areas of the world, childbirth occurs in a hospital with teams of trained medical professionals to ensure that the experience is routine and successful for the mother and the baby.  A hundred and twenty years ago, the experience of childbirth was very different.

In those days, most babies were born at home.  In the year 1900, only five percent of women gave birth in hospitals. The doctor or midwife — but more usually the expectant mother and the family – were expected to gather and provide any supplies that were needed for the event.  This was a practice that Johnson & Johnson was determined to change because, as our First Aid Manual stated, “The patient does not always know what is required for the maintenance of surgical cleanliness, and this is particularly true of young women, pregnant for the first time…”  [A Handbook of First Aid, Johnson & Johnson, New Brunswick, N.J., U.S.A., 1903, p. 29]

Mother and children, 1917, from our archives

There was very little information for expectant parents, and they usually got it from family members of members of the community.  Needless to say, much of that information was unscientific and inexact.  Even more worrisome was the high incidence of what used to be called “childbed fever”– infection caused by the same germs that caused surgical infections.

So how does that tie in with Johnson & Johnson?  The founders of Johnson & Johnson (although they were fathers, not mothers) had families, and the Company had many women employees, so they were all very aware of the need for products that specifically addressed improving the health of new mothers.  So in the 1890s, working with prominent obstetricians, Johnson & Johnson came out with maternity kits.  These were large kits containing professional sterile medical supplies and antiseptic soaps — everything a doctor would need to ensure a safe and healthy birth for a mother and child.  The kits – Dr. Simpson’s Maternity Packet and, later, Dr. Cooke’s Maternity Outfit, were named after the doctors who worked with Johnson & Johnson on the kits.  Dr. Cooke was especially well-respected:  he was a professor of obstetrics and an obstetric surgeon in New York, and the author of many articles and books in his field.   The Johnson & Johnson maternity kits could be purchased either through retail drug stores or surgical supply dealers.

Dr. Simpson’s Maternity Packet

Dr. Simpson’s Maternity Packet contained a disposable obstetric sheet, sterile cotton sheeting, sealed aseptic gauze, sterile ligatures, and sponges, a small package of antiseptic JOHNSON’S® Baby Powder, petroleum jelly, antiseptic surgeon’s soap for sterilizing the doctor’s hands, instruments and anything else that needed to be germ free, a washcloth, materials for washing the infant’s eyes, a package of safety pins and a chart for use in keeping birth records.

Illustration of Dr. Cooke’s Maternity Packet

Dr. Cooke’s packet was even larger.  In addition to greater quantities of the antiseptic supplies in Dr. Simpson’s kit, Dr. Cooke’s kit also contained  24 sanitary pads (women soon began writing to Johnson & Johnson asking for them as a separate product, giving us one of our oldest consumer businesses), a nail brush (for the doctor to use in scrubbing his hands), alcohol, Synol Soap (a disinfectant soap), olive oil, boric acid solution for cleaning the infant’s eyes, sterile surgical tape, and antiseptic tablets used to make solutions to sterilize instruments.   These kits were welcomed by obstetricians, druggists and parents, to the extent that druggists advertised that they carried them to get traffic into their pharmacies.

An idea for a drugstore window sign by a retail druggist in Madison Wisconsin, submitted to THE RED CROSS MESSENGER in 1920.  Note that fathers-to-be were listed as having responsibility for gathering supplies for childbirth.

In 1902, Johnson & Johnson also published “Hygiene in Maternity,” a booklet for expectant mothers covering all aspects of pregnancy, diet, delivery and how to care for a newborn baby.  The booklets were small in size so that women could carry them in a pocket or purse, and they provided real health information to expectant mothers, instead of the traditional combination of urban legends, folk remedies and proverbs that expectant and new mothers had to navigate 100 years ago.  

Today, we talk about putting science in the service of the people who use our many products.  These maternity kits and the information booklets did exactly that over 100 years ago, and greatly helped women who were becoming mothers.

Here’s a quick quiz.  From the description of this Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies product, would the consumer using it be more likely to be listening to music on an MP3 player, or cranking up one of those old fashioned gramophones?  The product is a liquid bandage that’s applied with an applicator.  It forms a transparent, waterproof coating that keeps small wounds covered while they heal, and it won’t wash off with soap and water. 

Any guesses?  Here’s the answer:  get that gramophone out of the museum, because the product was Cotolia Liquid Court Plaster and, 100 years ago, it was the BAND-AID® Brand SINGLE STEP^TM  Liquid Bandage of its day.

Strange, but true:  we made a liquid bandage 100 years ago.

Cotolia Liquid Court Plasters made their first appearance in our price lists in 1905, sixteen years before the invention of BAND-AID® Brand Adhesive Bandages.  Here’s what a 1907 edition of RED CROSS NOTES, our publication for doctors and surgeons, said about Cotolia.   

“It forms a perfectly flexible coating upon the skin, which coating is transparent and waterproof.  The preparation contains an antiseptic, and therefore assists in healing the cuts, scratches and abrasions.  The bottles containing Cotolia are perfectly sealed to prevent evaporation, and instead of the ordinary brushes for the application of such plaster, Cotolia is put up with a glass spatula by which it is easily applied to the skin…”  [RED CROSS NOTES, Johnson & Johnson, Series V, No. 12, 1907, p. 282.]

Illustration showing Cotolia Liquid Court Plaster bottle and applicator

Cotolia Liquid Court Plaster came in glass bottles sealed with a cork, packaged inside a round aluminum tin for protection.  The glass applicator, which was deemed superior to the brushes used in competitor’s liquid court plasters, was attached to the inside end of the cork.

So what was a court plaster, anyway, and how did we come to make a liquid bandage around 100 years before we made a, well…liquid bandage?   Johnson & Johnson had been making court plasters since 1887.  They were small pieces of fabric with an adhesive on one side that were used to cover small blemishes, cuts or abrasions. 

Court plasters owe their odd name to their origin in the royal courts of Europe, where they started out as a fashion item called beauty spots.  They were often made of silk or taffeta and came in a variety of colors.  At some point in their history, someone discovered that they could be used to hide blemishes or small cuts, and they became a popular consumer product, a cousin to medicated plasters.  They were made with more glamorous materials because, unlike a medicated plaster which was generally worn on an area covered by clothing, court plasters were worn on visible areas such as the hands.  Johnson & Johnson made court plasters out of taffeta, like this one:

Black Taffeta Court Plaster Package

And we made court plasters with arnica, which was derived from a plant and used topically to treat aches, pains and inflammation from bruises and sprains. 

Arnica Court Plaster:  it was waterproof!

Liquid court plasters were designed to provide the same protection, but invisibly, and they were great for areas in which it was hard to get a court plaster to stay, such as hands and fingers.  Johnson & Johnson wasn’t the only company to make a liquid court plaster.  Here’s a 1910 ad for Carpenter’s Water-Proof Liquid Court Plaster, for example.   However, as Johnson & Johnson did with all of its products, it improved the safety, ingredients, method of working and method of delivery for Cotolia Liquid Court Plasters.  

Today, the liquid court plasters of 100 years ago are largely forgotten, but their influence lives on: whenever you watch a film or wear a synthetic material, you owe an accidental debt to these forgotten products, because they inadvertently led to two inventions that would help shape the 20th century:  celluloid and rayon.  This site tells the story of how two scientists, one in Albany, New York and the other in Lyons, France, accidentally spilled bottles of liquid court plaster when trying to use it as a liquid bandage, and got the inspirational ideas that led to synthetic fabrics and celluloid film.  

So, it’s strange, but true.  One hundred years before BAND-AID® Brand SINGLE STEP^TM  Liquid Bandage, we made a liquid bandage.  And even though Cotolia Liquid Court Plaster and its competitors are long forgotten — except by readers of this blog — their influence is felt every day in the innovations they caused that changed modern life.

One of the affiliate companies in the Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies is known for its tradition of using famous actresses in its advertising.  As it turns out, actresses like Jennifer Garner in the U.S. and Deepika Padukone in India are not the first celebrities to endorse our products.  Some very well-known actresses (and some actors and athletes) were also singing the praises of one of our products almost 100 years ago, in the Nineteen Teens…  The product was Synol Soap, an antiseptic soap, and famous Broadway and vaudeville actresses of the day were writing to Johnson & Johnson to tell the Company about how much they liked the product and how they used it as part of their theater routines.

The most famous of those actresses was Louise Dresser, who appeared in 49 films and was one of the three nominees for the first-ever Academy Award for best actress for 1928.  In 1914, she was in a Broadway play called “Potash and Perlmutter” and wrote to the Company:

“ ‘Upon the recommendation of my physician, I have been using Synol Soap for the past year and have gotten so that I cannot do without it.  It is a most excellent preparation for the complexion and a wonderful mouth wash.  I have recommended it to all of my friends as an absolute necessity.’ “  [THE RED CROSS MESSENGER, Vol. VII, No. 1, June, 1914, p. 14]

In the more than slightly melodramatic style of the day, Dresser continued:

“ ‘For the sake of humanity, I would suggest that you make known to the world the benefits that can be derived from this wonderful preparation.’ ” [THE RED CROSS MESSENGER, Vol. VII, No. 1, June, 1914, p. 14]

An endorsement like that was of course way too good to pass up, so scientific director and chief publicity officer Fred Kilmer printed it in THE RED CROSS MESSENGER, the Company publication for retail pharmacists, along with the line drawing of Louise Dresser seen above.

Trixie Friganza

Trixie Friganza, a leading musical comedy actress known for her many roles and her social activism, wrote: “ ‘To me Synol Soap has proved itself indispensable for its many uses.  I have used it for several years and have found that none can compare with it as a toilet necessity, and I am never without it.  Wishing you continued success in your needful venture.’ ” [THE RED CROSS MESSENGER, Vol VII, No. 2, July, 1914,  p. 38] Besides being an actress, vaudeville headliner, and dedicated fan of Synol Soap, Trixie Friganza was also known for championing the struggle for women’s right to vote.

Public Domain photo of Trixie Friganza campaigning for women’s suffrage, courtesy of Wikipedia/Wikimedia Commons

Illustration of Florence Reed from THE RED CROSS MESSENGER

Florence Reed, another well-known actress, also sent a letter to Johnson & Johnson.  She was in a very popular play during the 1914 theater season, and she, too, made the Company’s antiseptic soap a part of her backstage ritual.  She wrote:    “ ‘I have used thousands of toilet preparations in my career, but have found Synol Soap to be incomparable for the complexion, hair, scalp, and as a mouth wash.’ ”  [THE RED CROSS MESSENGER, Vol. VII, No. 1, June, 1914, p. 14]

Ms. Reed was clearly someone who believed in products that could multitask.  Synol, which had a pleasant, slightly camphory smell, was antibacterial but mild enough for people to wash their hair and faces with it, and many of the actors and actresses used it to remove their heavy theatrical makeup.  (That heavy makeup, worn daily, could wreak havoc on the complexion.)  Stella Mayhew, an actress who appeared in many musicals and vaudeville reviews, wrote to tell Johnson & Johnson the following:

“ ‘Just a line to let you know that I have used your Synol Soap for the past few months and know of no other preparation that has any of the qualities that Synol has.  It is excellent in removing makeup.’ ” [THE RED CROSS MESSENGER, Vol. VII, No. 1, June, 1914, p. 14]

Naturally, Fred Kilmer printed that excerpt from her letter in THE RED CROSS MESSENGER.

Sam Bernard used Synol Soap backstage on Broadway

It wasn’t just the women who were using Synol.  Sam Bernard, appearing in a play at the Schubert Theater, wrote to tell the Company that “ ‘Your Synol Soap has proven a splendid addition to my toilet articles.  I use it steadily and prefer it to all other such products.’ ” [THE RED CROSS MESSENGER, Vol. VII, No. 1, June, 1914, p. 14]

Public domain photo of Valli Valli, courtesy of Wikipedia/Wikimedia Commons

A popular European silent film actress with the unlikely name of Valli Valli also was a fan of Synol.  She wrote in a letter to Johnson & Johnson:  “ ‘It is absolutely one of the best preparations I have ever used in my career for keeping the skin in perfect condition.’ ”   [THE RED CROSS MESSENGER, Vol. VII, No. 1, June, 1914, p. 14]

So what exactly was this product that actors and actresses of the silent film and vaudeville era couldn’t do without?  It’s another example of a product developed for doctors, surgeons and nurses that found wider use in society.  Synol Soap had been developed by Johnson & Johnson around 1900 in response to a request from physicians for an antiseptic, germ killing soap that they could use to wash their hands, disinfect instruments and clean their patients.  It came in cake form and liquid form (as shown above) in a glass bottle with a shaker top.  In the days before antibiotics, Synol was widely promoted for a variety of uses to help keep people and their families healthier.  Like all of the Company’s products, it worked well and, since Synol Soap was mild enough to be used like a regular soap, people were advised to do all kinds of things with it, from washing their hands and faces, to diluting it for use as a mouthwash, to shampooing their hair, to disinfecting their houses during spring cleaning.  It’s not surprising that actors and actresses, looking for an all-purpose reliable product to help wash their makeup off, keep their complexions clear and keep themselves healthy so they wouldn’t miss a performance, would write rave reviews about Synol Soap.

Kilmer made these celebrity Synol testimonials a feature of two editions of THE RED CROSS MESSENGER in 1914.  In other MESSENGERS, he printed Synol Soap testimonials from professional and amateur athletes.  With the outbreak of World War I in Europe in August of that year, the articles in THE RED CROSS MESSENGER took a more serious turn.  But it’s certain that retail druggists told their starstruck Synol Soap customers that some very famous faces were using Synol Soap too…just like they were.

It’s January, 1910: exactly 100 years ago.  It’s the start of a new year and a new decade, and Johnson & Johnson is marking that beginning by launching a major new advertising campaign for one of its consumer products:  JOHNSON’S® Shaving Cream Soap. 

The product had been introduced in the early 1900s, and was developed out of the Company’s medicated soaps that were manufactured for use by doctors, surgeons and patients.   It was it considered to be an excellent product by the consumers who used it, and it came in innovative packaging – a collapsible tube! – but it hadn’t achieved the popularity or critical mass enjoyed by some of the Company’s other products, like belladonna and kidney plasters.

Ad for Belladonna Plasters with its well-known slogan

The Famous Feels Good on the Back ad for Kidney Plasters

Those products each had a famous advertising slogan that made its way into popular culture.  The Company was looking for similar ways to attract some attention to JOHNSON’S® Shaving Cream Soap.  So in 1909, they tried this:

Calling All Retail Pharmacists – we need a catch phrase.  Someone?  Anyone?

When that didn’t achieve the desired result, Company management decided to apply the latest developments in the growing field of advertising to the product, and conduct a “modern” advertising campaign.

In 1910, before radio and television, that would of course be a print campaign.  Fred Kilmer, our scientific director and editor of THE RED CROSS MESSENGER, announced that the target audience would be (no surprise) men who shaved their faces.  Ironically enough, that subset of the population did not include Kilmer, who wrote so extensively about and helped market the product. 

Fred Kilmer, who probably did not use JOHNSON’S® Shaving Cream Soap on a regular basis.

Kilmer, as editor of THE RED CROSS MESSENGER, our publication for retail pharmacists, provided regular updates about the development of the advertising campaign before it launched.  THE MESSENGER printed articles talking about plans for the campaign, how it would roll out, and how retail pharmacists could participate.

Here’s what Fred Kilmer reported:

“The advertising will run continuously and the space used will be full pages and half pages and prominent locations; in certain instances the advertisements will appear in colors.”  [THE RED CROSS MESSENGER, Vol. II, No. 7, December, 1909,  p. 314]

The ambitious advertising campaign was set to appear in the hugely popular Scribner’s Magazine, to take advantage of former President Theodore Roosevelt’s series of articles appearing in the publication.  System, a magazine targeted to businessmen, was also going to run the ads, as would the Sunday magazine sections of some of the major U.S. newspapers, the Literary Digest, Harper’s Weekly, The Saturday Evening Post and Collier’s, a popular magazine of the era.  Not to miss an opportunity to reach men who needed to shave, the ad campaign also included magazines for military officers, a magazine called Everybody’s Magazine (despite the title, it was chosen because of its large male audience, and it focused on investigative journalism) and The American Review of Reviews.   The ads offered a free trial tube of JOHNSON’S® Shaving Cream Soap to anyone who wanted to try it.  Interested customers would then be directed to the retail pharmacy nearest to them that carried the product.   Kilmer estimated that the campaign would bring an estimated two million new customers into retail pharmacies.  Needless to say, pharmacists were eager to participate.   Kilmer urged them to cut out the full-page magazine ads and exhibit them in their store windows, in order to draw people in. 

One of the Saturday Evening Post ads

The modern ad campaign was created by the J. Walter Thompson Company of New York, continuing the relationship that started when James Walter Thompson himself started working with founder Robert Wood Johnson on the Company’s advertising.  The ads were designed to be informative and convincing, and used techniques that Thompson pioneered, such as the more sophisticated use of product testimonials. 

An ad from 1919 using the more modern techniques

According to Fred Kilmer, the J. Walter Thompson agency’s mission was nothing less than the following:

“They will undertake and expect to succeed in placing the merits of Johnson’s Shaving Cream Soap before every man in the United States who has need for it.  It will be their work to send customers to the drug store, and to keep them going.”  [THE RED CROSS MESSENGER, Vol. II, No. 7, December, 1909,  p. 314]

Besides the magazine ads, there would also be a large number of displays, product booklets and other materials for the drugstores selling the product. 

Example of an in-store drugstore advertisement

So why would retail druggists care about the plans for the ad campaign?  Because as Kilmer explained, it wasn’t just designed to sell more JOHNSON’S® Shaving Cream Soap (although that was its primary goal).  It was also designed to get more people into the retail drug stores who sold the Shaving Cream Soap, thus increasing the druggists’ overall business.  So if druggists sold or decided to start carrying the product, they were able to participate in a campaign that had as its secondary goal increasing their business. If you were a retail druggist in 1910, you had to be excited by that.  It was another example of the close and cooperative relationship between the Company and its customers, which dated back to the founding of Johnson & Johnson, and would later find expression in the first paragraph of Our Credo. 

One day’s worth of letters — 3179 of them — requesting the free sample from the ad campaign

The modern ad campaign was a success, and spurred thousands of letters requesting the free samples from men eager to try the product.  In later years, customer testimonials to JOHNSON’S® Shaving Cream Soap would continue to be used in ads for the product, and be reprinted in THE RED CROSS MESSENGER.   The product never did get a slogan that made it into popular culture, though.

Here’s another special behind the scenes video tour of some lesser known items from Johnson & Johnson history.  If you’ve ever wondered where the last loading dock for horse drawn wagons at Johnson & Johnson is located, which unusual 1960s fashion was made by one of our operating companies, why we once made doll clothing, and how we got from medicated plasters to JOHNSON’S® Baby Powder, you’ll know the answers to all of those questions after you watch this post.   You’ll also be able to see — for the first time — letters from two of our founders written in 1887, just a year after the Company was founded.  Enjoy!

What Johnson & Johnson ad was so popular that people were inspired to make their own versions of it?  Hint:  the ad ran for an incredible 30 years and, when the Company tried to update it, consumers protested.  Here’s another hint:  the ad contained one of our most memorable advertising slogans, and it advertised a product that most people today have never heard of.

The Ad that Launched a Thousand Tributes

The ad was for RED CROSS® Kidney Plasters, and the tagline was “Feels Good on the Back.”  RED CROSS® Kidney Plasters were one of the Company’s most popular medicated plasters, and they provided pain relief for abdominal and lower back pain.  They got their name because they were kidney-shaped and were worn low on the back – over the kidneys. 

An actual kidney plaster, with its distinctive kidney shape

The Feels Good on the Back ad made its debut around 1889-1890 and immediately became a hit with the public.  The image of the couple sitting on a beach watching the waves come in, with the man’s arm around the woman’s waist, really resonated with people.  And when you look closely at the ad, that’s no surprise:  the image, with its tagline “Feels Good on the Back” appealed to people because it wasn’t about kidney plasters.  It was really about human connections and human touch.  The phrase certainly applied to the therapeutic effects of a kidney plaster, but when accompanied by the illustration, it also highlighted the soothing and comforting effects of touch – something that the Company also brought out in its baby products advertising, and which continues to be a focus in many of our ads today. 

The couple was facing away from the viewer, which only added to the appeal.  Since viewers couldn’t see their faces, people could substitute themselves for the couple in the ad peacefully watching the ocean – sort of a late 19th century zen moment.  (Actually, blog readers might want to take a moment and try doing that right now:  it actually works, and you’ll get a few seconds of calm, peacefulness and comfort.  You can practically hear the waves and feel the sun.) 

1916 Drugstore Window Display

Johnson & Johnson was inundated with requests for the ad, and poster-sized copies were soon displayed in thousands of drugstore windows.  During World War I, the image and theme were used a number of times to illustrate support for the men and women serving in the armed forces. 

A 1918 U.S. Liberty Loan Campaign featured this cartoon homage to the Feels Good on the Back ad.  Lady Liberty has her arm around a soldier.

People took the Feels Good on the Back ad so much to heart that many of them felt compelled to produce their own versions, which they sent to Johnson & Johnson.  Fred Kilmer, who edited the Company publications, reprinted these efforts in THE RED CROSS MESSENGER, the publication for retail pharmacists.  (Since I’m blogging, I feel compelled to point out that the consumer artwork in our publication around 100 years ago was an early example of user-generated content!)  Here are some of the public’s efforts that were reprinted in the MESSENGERS.

A couple in Philadelphia, PA  re-enacts the ad for “Anybody’s Magazine in 1911.

Drawing inspired by the Feels Good on the Back ad

Another drawing — this one with a little bit of humor added to the scene

Even the Company got into the act.  This one appeared on the cover of the January, 1917  edition of THE RED CROSS MESSENGER.

The Feels Good on the Back ad ran unchanged for an astounding 30 years.  At one point, the Company tried to update the woman’s outfit, causing a flood of protests from consumers who wanted the ad kept exactly as it was.  Here’s what Fred Kilmer said: 

“…she had become a favorite in many lands.  The whole world had grown to know her as a friend and to manifest an interest in her love affair.  And her friends simply wouldn’t permit her to wear anything but those simple old-fashioned clothes.  They protested vehemently.  So for thirty years she has snapped her fingers at Dame Fashion.”   [THE RED CROSS MESSENGER, Vol. XII, No. 4, 1919,  p. 93]

The Company very wisely decided not to go through with the update.   And even though the product advertised by the couple in the ad is from a much earlier time in our history, their image still connects with people today because of the universal feelings it appeals to. 
 
In my next post, I’ll talk about an ad from 1922 that was so popular that the Company brought it back over half a century later.

At the end of my next to last post, I asked the question:  what did people use to fix everything before duct tape was invented by a Johnson & Johnson affiliate company in 1942?  Was there a “duct tape” before duct tape?  It turns out that there was…and oddly enough, it also was a product from the Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies:  ZONAS® Adhesive Plaster.

ZONAS® Adhesive Plaster was a rubber-based adhesive tape.  The unusual brand name of ZONAS® derived not from a person’s last name (there were no “Zonas Brothers” behind the product), but from the fact that the product was made with zinc oxide, a compound that soothed potential skin irritation from the adhesive on the plaster.   They were used to close small wounds and hold dressings in place.

Illustration from 1911 Johnson & Johnson Hand Book of First Aid, Showing Proper Use of Adhesive Plaster to Close Wounds

As I mentioned in the duct tape post, zinc oxide adhesive plasters are one of the Company’s oldest products, and were included in the 1887 Johnson & Johnson price list.  Like medicated plasters, adhesive plasters were made out of rubber with an adhesive backing; the difference was that they contained no medication. 

A Johnson & Johnson First Aid handbook from 1911 devoted an entire section to ZONAS® Adhesive Plasters – first, for their many uses in medicine and first aid, and then:

“Adhesive Plaster has a great variety of uses independent of its surgical application.  In the household, the workshop, the factory, and in travelling, it has an almost inexhaustible list of everyday uses.”  [Johnson & Johnson Hand Book of First Aid, Johnson & Johnson, New Brunswick, NJ  1911, p. 35]

In case you’re wondering what those uses were, here’s what the First Aid handbook says Adhesive Plaster could fix:  clothing, furniture, India rubber articles, hoses, “water-proofs”, mackintoshes (raincoats, to all of us modern folks), boots, shoes, bicycle tires and the kind of inflatable motor tires you would find on a Model T automobile (please don’t try that one at home); leather purses, men’s pocket books, gloves, broken pail handles, glassware, window panes, leather bindings of books (we actually have some books in our archives that have been repaired this way!).  It was ideal for sealing packages to be shipped, making hinges on a pasteboard box cover, being used as weather stripping, fixing window shades and curtains and, if that wasn’t enough, the Hand Book of First Aid mentioned that Adhesive Plaster could also repair such 1911-era unmentionables as women’s corsets and girdles.  Apparently ZONAS® Adhesive Plaster was great at stopping corset stays from sticking out and jabbing the wearer in the ribs.

Did we Mention the Unmentionables?  A Shoe, Corset and Woman’s Glove, all mended with…what else?…Adhesive Plaster

Some glassware with unsightly – if effective – repairs made by the Company’s Adhesive Plaster.

A woman weather stripping the top of a door with Adhesive Plaster, 1911

Illustration of a window repaired with Adhesive Plaster

A 1910 edition of THE RED CROSS MESSENGER published some tips for using Adhesive Plaster sent in by a customer in Victoria, Australia.  Here are some of his suggestions:

“Cricket Bats – When string of the handle becomes loose fasten it with adhesive plaster.  Squeaky boots or shoes – These are cured by a layer of adhesive plaster between the soles…A gold ring dropped down a crack in the floor was brought up by a strip of adhesive plaster used as a fishing line.”  [THE RED CROSS MESSENGER, Vol. III, #3, August, 1910, p. 62]

But that’s not all.  Other creative uses included re-lining shoes when the linings wore out (presumably, the person who suggested that didn’t live near a shoe repair place), mending delicate silk gloves (you were supposed to adhere the plaster to the inside of the glove and go over it with a warm iron), and, unbelievably enough, as a night-time wrinkle treatment (ouch!) and a cure for mouth breathing while sleeping.   

Mrs. Ada Roberts, the wife of a retail druggist who subscribed to THE RED CROSS MESSENGER, wrote an article in a 1910 issue about the myriad use of adhesive plaster.  In fine Edwardian writing style, she began:

“It is good business acumen to stimulate the sale of a meritorious article of moderate price, especially if that article has a variety of household uses…Adhesive Plaster is just such an article.  Aside from its legitimate sphere in modern surgery, in the household.  It has an almost inexhaustible list of every-day uses.”  [THE RED CROSS MESSENGER, Vol. III, No. 5, October, 1910, pp. 113-116, “Adhesive Plaster As a Steady Profit Maker” by Mrs. Ada Roberts]

She then went on to list — for three entire pages! — those almost inexhaustible uses for ZONAS®  Adhesive Plaster (the wrinkle treatment was her idea), and she even included holding dressings in place – one of the actual uses for which the product was sold.

So not only did the Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies invent the product that has…well, stuck to modern popular culture because of its usefulness, we also invented its predecessor too.

About this time of year almost 100 years ago, Johnson & Johnson would have been reminding you that it was time for Clean Up Week.  What was Clean Up Week, and why was a company nagging people to clean their houses and yards?

Clean Up Week was a concept promoted by Johnson & Johnson to rally people around spring cleaning…which leads us back to the question:  Why did the people at Johnson & Johnson feel they needed to remind people to clean their houses?  It’s not as if they were planning a visit.  

The reminders were due to something else entirely:  the Company’s commitment to public health and reducing the spread of infectious diseases.  So the idea behind Clean Up Week wasn’t just to spruce up your house after a long winter or get rid of clutter, it was to really scrub any areas in which germs could be lurking.  That was critically important in the days before antibiotics and vaccines, when the warmer weather of spring all too often brought the resurgence of diseases such as polio, diphtheria, measles, smallpox, typhoid, whooping cough, and more.  The Clean Up Week campaigns were designed to educate the public so that they could help reduce the spread of these illnesses and keep their families and communities safer.

Illustration of Lister’s Fumigator, one of the Company’s early products, at work.

 Here’s what the March, 1917 edition of THE RED CROSS MESSENGER (our publication for retail pharmacists) said:

“Clean-up time means much more than it did a few years ago to most people.  Now they do not simply plan to clean-up for the sake of tidiness.  They clean to protect their homes, to make them safe for their children…to disinfect and fumigate their homes and to freshen living rooms and bed rooms and kill disease germs.”  [THE RED CROSS MESSENGER, Vol. IX, No. 5, March 1917, p. 132] 

So Johnson & Johnson ran full-page color ads in national magazines such as Good Housekeeping, Designer, Woman’s Magazine, Cosmopolitan and Pictorial Review announcing Clean Up Week.  The ads were beautiful and eye-catching, and featured a woman in full “cleaning the house” attire of that era, as well as hands holding a variety of Johnson & Johnson products that could be used for Clean Up Week.  These products included the antibacterial soaps Synol Soap and Camphenol, as well as fumigators (to get rid of disease-causing insects) and gauze (to use as scrubbing cloths). 

Black and White reproduction of a 1917 Clean Up Week ad 

The ads also promoted the giveaway of a Household Hand Book free to anyone interested.  The Household Hand Books were distributed by retail druggists, and could be imprinted with the name and address of the drugstore.  THE RED CROSS MESSENGER ran articles urging druggists to become leaders in their community with regard to public health, by distributing the handbooks and encouraging people to come to them for advice and supplies that they could use to clean up their homes and protect their families.

The Household Hand Book had a beautiful full-color cover, featuring a knight dressed in an odd combination of medieval and ancient Roman armor, with a “J&J” on his chest, ready to protect the home against germs, and standing in front of a banner with the dire-sounding quote “Men and Women are doomed constantly to combat dirt disease, and the devil.”    Naturally, Fred Kilmer was the editor of the Hand Book, and he thought of everything a family could potentially need from the publication.  The first page had space to write the contact information for the nearest doctor, druggist, hospital, police and fire station.  The introduction stated:

“The mission of this book is to assist in the war against disease and to aid in the conservation and promotion of health and life.  It is a book for every-day use by the individual, in the household, camp, shop, factory or community.  Primarily the book points out the way to prevent the spread of sickness and disease.  The teachings of the book are based upon the highest and most modern authorities in hygiene and sanitation.”  [Household Hand Book, 1917, inside front cover.]

The Household Hand Book contained advice on how to avoid contagious disease, pointers on caring for a sick patient and proper conduct in the sickroom, how to recognize the symptoms of different illnesses, how diseases are spread, how to disinfect your home, when to send for the doctor, first aid information, and more mundane things like how to care for your baby, proper daily care of the teeth, and commonsense advice on how to avoid accidents.  If you were part of a household in 1917, you would not only want a copy of the Household Hand Book, you would probably refer to it constantly.   After the national Clean Up Week ads ran, the Company was inundated by requests for the Household Hand Book from across the U.S.

Public Health Display of Household Handbooks, 1918

People would have rushed to their local drugstore to get the materials they would need, as recommended in the Clean Up Week ads.  And because Johnson & Johnson educated retail pharmacists about its products, the pharmacists could speak knowledgeably (if they had read the materials) about how the Company’s products such as antibacterial soaps and fumigators worked, how they were manufactured, and how they could help people keep their families safe. 

In 1918, during World War I, the Clean Up Week campaign was portrayed as a home-front war measure in defense of the home from germs.  Once again, the Company enlisted the help of the retail pharmacists who sold our products to inaugurate Clean Up Weeks in their towns, urging them to get the cooperation of the mayor, the town’s merchants and the schools. 

By the way, here’s a list of places in and outside the house that people were urged to clean and disinfect during Clean Up Week.  Inside the house:  ceilings, floor, doors, closets, garrets, windows, baseboards, cupboards, stairways, cellars, window frames, sashes and glass.  Outside the house, people were advised to clear brush and rubbish in back yards, clean vaults and sewers, stagnant pools, gutters, barnyards, chicken houses, drains, stables and dog houses.  

Postcard from the Nineteen Teens, addressed to “Synol Soap” (instead of Johnson & Johnson) in New Brunswick, N.J.   

Once readers recovered from the backbreaking and exhausting task of spring cleaning in the Nineteen-Teens, they could be sure that they were, as the cover of the Household Hand Book said, “The Protector of The Home Against Germs,” an important mission and a necessity over 90 years ago.

What was the most unusual job in Johnson & Johnson history?  Was it digging this tunnel?  Working a gigantic printing press? Running a huge water filtration system? Making Mosquitoons? Or quality testing our short-lived cola tonic with the sherry base?

How about…glassblower.

Huh?  We employed a glassblower? Well, actually…according to our records, we employed nine glassblowers.  And it had to do with the Company’s manufacture of sterile sutures and ligatures for surgery.

These are some of the sterile sutures and ligatures made by Johnson & Johnson almost 100 years ago, packaged in glass tubes…made by Company glassblowers.

At the time, Johnson & Johnson wasn’t just the largest producer of sterile surgical dressings in the world, it was also the largest manufacturer of catgut ligatures in the world, producing an astounding 10 million feet per year.  A retail druggist visiting Johnson & Johnson in 1917 toured the Company’s ligature laboratory, which operated under the strictest antiseptic conditions.   He watched the raw materials being cleaned and sterilized (employees in the department explained to him that full cleaning took about a week) and chromicized, which was the process of waterproofing the catgut so that it wouldn’t be absorbed by the body for a set period of time.

To insure the quality of its ligatures — because the lives of surgical patients depended on them — the Company performed every step of the manufacturing process with minute detail.  The druggist commented “…I noticed that no detail is so slight that it can be neglected in the Johnson & Johnson laboratories.”  [THE RED CROSS MESSENGER, January 1917, Vol IX, No. 4, p. 107]

Ligatures Being Dried

After the chromicizing process, the raw material was twisted into strands by machine and then dried, after which the strands were smoothed and polished.  They were sorted by size and then tested for strength, which was important because it insured consistency – that each container of sutures or ligatures was exactly the same quality as all of the others.

“When the surgeon gets a strand of Johnson & Johnson catgut he knows exactly the pulling it will stand before it snaps.  The smallest strand, twelve-thousandths of an inch, will stand five pounds, and the largest, thirty-six thousandths of an inch, will stand fifty pounds.  They have to come up to that standard or they are rejected.”  [THE RED CROSS MESSENGER, January 1917, Vol IX, No. 4, p. 108]

The ligatures were then cut into various lengths and sterilized again.  Here’s where the glassblowers came in.  Let’s quote our druggist again:

“In the meantime the glassblowers are busy in a nearby department.  These skillful men are blowing and shaping glass containers.  Under the influence of their deft fingers glass assumes many fanciful shapes.  It takes nine of them to keep up with the demand, and they turn out many thousands a day.”  [THE RED CROSS MESSENGER, January 1917, Vol IX, No. 4, p. 109]

The Catgut Sterilization Room, 1917

When the ligatures came out of the sterilizer, they were placed in the glass containers by workers wearing sterilized rubber tips on their fingers, and working on glass-topped  tables – because the glass could be kept germ-free.  The tubes were corked and sent back to the glassblowers, who sealed them.  The sealed package was sterilized yet another time and was then considered “ready for the surgeon.”

When each batch of ligatures was finished, a sample package was chosen at random, opened and tested by scientists in the Company’s bacteriological laboratory.  Here’s the description of the testing given by the visiting druggist:

“The chemists open a package from each lot, using the same precautions in handling it as should be taken in a hospital.  They remove the ligature strand with sterile forceps, and then conduct a check-test to determine if the sample is sterile.  These tests run into the many thousands and are the most perfect known means to check the efficiency of the sterilization process.  The chemist not only puts a label on the batch of strands from which he has tested samples, certifying that they are sterile, but he must sign his report in the record book.  Johnson & Johnson intend that ligatures shall reach the surgeon in a perfect condition and surgeons have told me that they do. [THE RED CROSS MESSENGER, January 1917, Vol IX, No. 4, p. 109]

After taking such painstaking care to make sure that every ligature was sterile, uniform and trustworthy, the Company wasn’t about to leave the packaging to chance.  It had to be done to the same exacting specifications….which is why we had such an unusual job as glassblower at Johnson & Johnson almost 100 years ago.

Sterile Suture or Ligature package — Made by Johnson & Johnson Glassblowers

What’s the weirdest thing ever made by the Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies?  Was it a tonic medicine with a sherry base?  Or sausage casings?  Or doll clothing?  (Yes, we once made that too, out of non-woven fabric.  That’s the subject of a future post.) Or maybe beauty spots?  Or duct tape?  Or maybe…it was rubber bands.

So…we made rubber bands?  Yes we actually did — or to be more accurate, one of our acquisitions did in 1910.   Readers of Kilmer House will remember that the Company made its first major acquisition in 1905 when it purchased the J. Ellwood Lee Company of Conshohocken, Pennsylvania.  That company was a medical products manufacturer that made medicinal plasters, catheters and other medical equipment.   Lee, a self-made business success, became a member of the Johnson & Johnson Board of Directors along with two of his associates including Charles Heber Clark, a Lee company executive who happened to be a world-renowned humorist of the time.

Dual Johnson & Johnson/J. Ellwood Lee Company Price List from 1910

So, back to the rubber bands.   As part of the acquisition, each company agreed to list the other’s products in their catalogs.  The J. Ellwood Lee Company made products such as catheters, gloves, water bottles and medical tubing that were made out of rubber and, in 1910, Lee constructed an automobile tire factory in Pennsylvania to make tires for the new automobile industry.  (Pursuit of that market by Lee also temporarily put Johnson & Johnson in the auto tire business, until all ties between the Company and the Lee Tire & Rubber Company were severed.)

J. Ellwood Lee

Rubber bands were often given away to customers by retail druggists.   J. Ellwood Lee, ever an enterprising businessman, saw an opportunity and started packaging cards and boxes of red rubber bands in assorted sizes that could be sold by druggists.  “Jelco” rubber bands, as they were called (the name is a contraction of the J. Ellwood Lee Company name) were advertised as an improvement over standard rubber bands due to their improved elasticity and longevity, a result of the type of rubber used and an improved method of curing it during manufacture.  So as part of the agreement to list and promote each other’s products, in the 1910 issues of The Red Cross Messenger, Johnson & Johnson promoted Jelco Rubber Bands to retail druggists and listed them in its price lists.

Page from the 1910 Price List showing the listing for Jelco Rubber Bands

(By the way, Lee’s automobile tires were initially also called “Jelco” until automaker Henry Ford objected…because he didn’t want his automobiles riding around on tires that suggested “jelly” to people.  So Lee changed the name of the tires to “Lee of Conshohocken.”)