Perhaps the most famous of these was Listerine, invented by Dr. Joseph Joshua Lawrence in 1879. Lawrence had attended Lister’s lecture in Philadelphia, which inspired him to begin manufacturing his own antiseptic concoction in the back of an old cigar factory in St. Louis shortly thereafter. Lawrence’s formula contained thymol (derived from phenol) in addition to eucalyptol and menthol. It also had an alcohol concentration of 27 percent. Nothing would have come of Listerine had the entrepreneurial pharmacist Jordan Wheat Lambert not recognized its potential when he met Lawrence in 1881.
...more
