Joseph Lister Discovered Listerine

Did you ever wonder how Listerine got its name?  It is named after Joseph Lister, who developed Listerine in 1879.  The slogan "Kills germs that cause bad breath " was used for decades.  Listerine was originally sold by Lambert Pharmacy.  Later, Listerine continued to be sold by Warner-Lambert, and today, by Johnson and Johnson.  Listerine made claims that eventually were found to be false.  They claimed that Listerine could help cure colds and sore throats.  Their advertising was changed to prevent the public from falsely believing that Listerine could cure colds. 

Listerine was invented in the nineteenth century as powerful a surgical antiseptic. It was later sold, in distilled form, as both a floor cleaner and a cure for gonorrhea. But it wasn't a runaway success until the 1920s, when it was pitched as a solution for "chronic halitosis" — a then obscure medical term for bad breath. Listerine's new ads featured forlorn young women and men, eager for marriage but turned off by their mate's rotten breath. "Can I be happy with him in spite of that?" one maiden asked herself. Until that time, bad breath was not conventionally considered such a catastrophe. But Listerine changed that. As the advertising scholar James B. Twitchell writes, "Listerine did not make mouthwash as much as it made halitosis." In just seven years, the company's revenues rose from $115,000 to more than $8 million.

Joseph Lister was a pioneer of antiseptic surgery.His discovery has helped kill germs for 140 years!  I doubt he was properly compensated for his contribution to the prevention of bad breath.