Kilmer House

One of the most fascinating people behind Johnson & Johnson was Dr. Fred B. Kilmer, who was the Director of Scientific Affairs for Johnson & Johnson for 40 years, starting in 1889.  Company Founder Robert Wood Johnson (who lived as well as worked in New Brunswick) became friendly with Dr. Kilmer when he visited Kilmer’s pharmacy — the Opera House Pharmacy — in downtown New Brunswick.  Besides being a scientist, Dr. Kilmer (a president of the New Jersey Pharmaceutical Association) understood marketing and promotion, and was a writer. Another of Kilmer’s customers at the pharmacy was the inventor Thomas Alva Edison, who bought supplies to use in his experiments at his lab in Menlo Park. 

Along with its more famous products, the Company made some lesser-known and more unusual products in its early days. One of these products was Vino Kolafra, a restorative tonic made from kola nut extract with a sherry base.

The formation of the Coca-Cola Company in 1893 and its subsequent advertising campaigns helped spark interest in tonic preparations among the population of the United States. Johnson & Johnson introduced Vino Kolafra in 1894, advertising it as a calmer of nerves, an imparter of strength, a convalescent aid and as encouraging workers to “do more work with less effort and better results. Vino Kolafra was discontinued when it was discovered that workers were indeed doing more than expected: they were sampling the sherry base in increasing quantities.

Although Mosquitoons would win the prize for most humorous product name, they addressed a serious health concern. Mosquitoons were pyramid-shaped fumigators designed to kill mosquitoes, which were disease carriers as well as pests. Users were instructed to light them and then leave the house. The package reassured purchasers that Mosquitoons would not harm metal or clothing…leaving us to draw our own conclusions about the unintended effects of other pest removal products on the market at that time!

One of the strangest things Johnson & Johnson made were Court Plasters, which were little beauty spots made from leftover materials used to make medicated plasters. The Company would take a small amount of this material and make it into stars, moons and other shapes, which women put on their face to accentuate what they considered their most beautiful feature. Pictures of early theater and film actresses often show them wearing beauty spots – which look like moles, but on closer inspection are little stick-on dots, stars and crescents.

BAND-AID® Brand Adhesive Bandages are one of the most recognizable of the Company’s products.   They were invented in 1920 by an employee named Earle Dickson, who worked as a cotton buyer.  His wife Josephine was prone to kitchen accidents.  Earle wanted a bandage his wife could apply herself, so he took two of the Company’s early products – adhesive tape and gauze – and combined them by laying out a long piece of surgical tape and placing a strip of gauze down the middle. To keep the adhesive from sticking, he covered it with crinoline fabric.  Whenever his wife cut herself, she cut a piece of the tape and gauze pad and used it as a bandage.  Dickson mentioned his invention at work, and a new product was born.   The first BAND-AID® Brand Adhesive Bandages went on the market in 1921, and were the first ready-made adhesive bandages that consumers could apply themselves.  Earle Dickson was made a vice president at Johnson & Johnson.

Johnson & Johnson started with just 14 employees but, by the end of 1894, the Company employed 400, and manufacturing and office space occupied 14 buildings.  This photograph shows early employees of Johnson & Johnson in New Brunswick, New Jersey.  Many of the Company’s early employees were of Hungarian descent, since New Brunswick had one of the largest Hungarian populations in the country at the time. 

Absorbent cotton products are some of the earliest products made by Johnson & Johnson.  Absorbent cotton was used in surgery and wound treatment. Prior to the availability of sterile cotton products, leftover cotton from the floor of the country’s cotton mills was used by surgeons to treat wounds and stop bleeding.  The products shown in the above photograph number among the first products of Johnson & Johnson, and include a variety of sterile cotton, either plain (in the blue wrapper) or infused with iodine (Iodoform Cotton) and other sterilizing agents.  

As the pioneer in antiseptic and sterile surgical dressings in America, Johnson & Johnson constantly developed new sterile products and also served as a source of information on new approaches to surgery and patient care. 

Sterile sutures were another of the earliest products of Johnson & Johnson.  These are some examples of early sterile sutures made by the Company, and include catgut, which was an absorbable suture, and silk sutures. 

Johnson & Johnson worked diligently to improve sterilization methods and make a variety of sterile sutures available. Many physicians at the time used ordinary sewing thread to close wounds, so the Company’s sterile sutures were a welcome innovation for doctors and patients.  An interesting sidelight of the Company’s suture business is dental floss, which was originally made from leftover suture silk.

Aseptic gauze and cotton were among the first Johnson & Johnson products.  Many of these early products were impregnated with antiseptic agents or medication, and sealed in glass or metal containers to keep them sterile. These antiseptic gauzes and cottons helped revolutionize surgical care by greatly reducing mortality rates from surgical infection.  Many of the names of the Company’s early products, such as the ones above, were descriptive of the product or its ingredients.  Others — such as Dr. Grosvenor’s Bellcapsic Plaster — were named after physicians who contributed ideas for new products to the Company. 

Johnson & Johnson has been headquartered in New Brunswick, New Jersey, since the company got its start in 1886.  Believe it or not, this was due to a very fortunate railroad trip by James Wood Johnson. 

While looking for a factory location for the new company early in 1886, he was riding a westbound Pennsylvania Railroad train through New Jersey.  When the train slowed down to cross the Raritan River, Johnson looked out the window and saw a “To Let” sign on a four-story factory building in New Brunswick.  Johnson ended up renting the fourth floor of the building, a former wallpaper factory, which became the first home of Johnson & Johnson.  Besides having a convenient building for rent, New Brunswick was a rail, coach, waterway and commercial hub midway between New York and Philadelphia, and was home to a variety of small industries — like rubber companies, a needle factory, and a maker of fruit jars. 

Johnson & Johnson was founded in New Brunswick, New Jersey in 1886 by three brothers: Robert Wood Johnson, James Wood Johnson and Edward Mead Johnson.  The Company produced the first-ever antiseptic surgical dressings, based on Sir Joseph Lister’s theory of asepsis.  Before sterilization, 19^th century operating rooms were terrifying places, and patients were considered lucky to survive an operation.  Neither surgeons’ hands nor their instruments were sterilized, nor were the cotton and other materials they used to stop bleeding and dress wounds.  As a result, mortality rates from infection were extremely high.  Sir Joseph Lister, an English physician, tested French scientist Louis Pasteur’s theory of invisible germs as the cause of infection.  Lister sprayed an operating room with carbolic acid, a disinfectant, and in doing so, founded modern antiseptic surgery. 

The above photos show, L to R, Company founders Robert Wood Johnson, James Wood Johnson and Edward Mead Johnson.  In 1876, during the U.S. centennial celebrations, Robert Wood Johnson, who was in the medical products business, attended a conference in Philadelphia and heard Dr. Lister (photo below) speak. 

Lister’s speech inspired Johnson with the idea for a new business that could help patients and surgeons:  the manufacture of the world’s first sterile surgical dressings.   When Johnson formed the new company with his brothers in 1886, the antiseptic dressings they produced dramatically increased the survival rates of surgery patients.