SAY IT ISN'T SO! Oh heavens. How on earth did LYSOL get away with this and WHAT happened to the dear women who believed them?
My heart sank into my stomach. Are you kidding? No, they did indeed use Lysol as a douche and birth control. When women's genital areas blistered and bled, the company wiggled out of being held accountable by saying the woman used the product incorrectly or were allergic to it. The women were overlooked. Lysol did not take ownership for their wrong doings.
LYSOL was used for abortions. Some woman developed sepsis and died.
It seems that some companies wanted to make a sale so badly that they sugar coated the product to encourage the innocent to spend their hard earned money even if it was dangerous to the person's health.
Lysol ENCOURAGED THE USE OF THEIR PRODUCT as birth control. The specific, dangerous Lysol douche campaign was directed by Lehn & Fink to capitalize on the lack of legal, available contraception.
Did people sue Lysol for selling their product as a douche? Yes.
- 1935 Lawsuit: A woman filed a lawsuit after experiencing burns from a Lysol douche; the company defended itself by arguing the user had an "allergy to Lysol".
- 1961 Complaint: A man contacted the company after a Lysol douche caused his wife’s vagina to blister and bleed. The company’s vice president responded that this was "the first of its kind on record," despite previous reports.
- Legal Standing: In many cases during that era, the company was cleared of responsibility, often by arguing the product was used incorrectly, even though they marketed it for that purpose.
- Medical Evidence: By 1911, doctors had already recorded 193 poisonings and 5 deaths linked to Lysol douching.
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At first glance, this ad seems absurd—today, Lysol is known as a surface disinfectant, not a tool for intimacy. But in the early 20th century, Lysol had a long and disturbing history tied directly to women’s health. For decades, it was aggressively marketed to women for use in feminine hygiene, specifically as a vaginal douche.
•••
Many early ads for Lysol expressly encouraged audiences of women to use Lysol for feminine hygiene in the form of douching. In fact, ads conveyed to women that they simply wouldn’t be a good wife if they did not use the (at the time) cresol-containing cleaner as a douche: “She was a Jewel of a wife with just one flaw. She was guilty of one neglect that mars many marriages—Lysol helps avoid this.” These campaigns didn’t just imply personal failure, they equated cleanliness with marital success.
•••
This was not an uncommon thing, either: douching was the most popular birth control method in the United States from 1940 until the invention of birth control pills in 1960, and Lysol was by far the most popular product for this process. This widespread use had serious consequences. In 1911 alone, there were 193 reported Lysol poisonings, 5 of which were directly linked to uterine irrigation.
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Lehn & Fink, the at-the-time owners of Lysol products, regularly denied the dangers of their products in court, and used its popularity as a way to shield it from harm— the statement “Millions of Lysol douches are being applied at regular intervals” in a 1961 complaint went a long way towards ‘proving’ that the harsh toilet bowl cleanser was perfectly safe for intra-vaginal use by virtue of volume alone.
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Furthermore, it’s hard to say that doctors did not play a hand in making Lysol a household name. It was often recommended as a douching agent for feminine hygiene and birth control. Unfortunately, despite what the company promised, Lysol was both extremely dangerous to sensitive mucous membranes and not at all useful as a birth control product, despite its popularity.
👩🏻💻by @kamryn__p
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The media has a stronghold on people? Advertising works. Some have a tendency to believe whatever others say is good for us when it isn't. As long as a source of authority says so or the advertising campaign is positive, we may be like sheep and follow them anywhere.
After researching this Lysol misinformation that was carried out, I was sickened about what I read and saw. Sickened, like the time I found out that human cell lines were used to make vaccines. After reading the fine print provided by the CDC, I about vapor locked.
Other info:
With how convincing this Lysol Campaign was, I wondered if Edward Bernays was in charge of it, but supposedly he wasn't. Still, he used techniques like the ones Lehn & Fink used.
~d
- Euphemisms: Ads never explicitly said "contraceptive" but used phrases like "feminine hygiene," "complete hygiene," and "delicate female tissues," which strongly implied its use for internal cleansing and birth control.
- Emotional Appeals: They targeted anxieties about husbands leaving due to perceived uncleanliness or odor, linking proper hygiene (via Lysol douching) to marital happiness and attractiveness.
- Fear of Pregnancy: Ads hinted that Lysol could help resolve fears of pregnancy, playing on the era's desire for family planning without explicitly calling it contraception, which was illegal to advertise.
- Expert Endorsements (Misleading): Some campaigns included recommendations from female gynecologists, further legitimizing its use for women's intimate health.
- Legal Loopholes: By focusing on cleaning and hygiene, Lehn & Fink avoided legal issues surrounding contraception advertising, as no strong consumer protection laws existed then, allowing them to profit from the implied use.
- Lysol's original formula contained cresol, a caustic chemical that could cause severe burns, inflammation, and even death when used internally as a douche or abortifacient, leading to numerous poisonings and fatalities.
