For hundreds, if not thousands of years, when the weather started to get warm, people around the world engaged in a particular ritual: Spring cleaning. Today, we think of Spring cleaning as an opportunity to deep clean our homes after the winter, to evaluate our soon-to-be-worn spring and summer clothing to see what can be given away, and perhaps to declutter. But at the start of the 20th century, Spring cleaning had a different purpose: helping protect families from contagious diseases.

Two important topics related to Spring cleaning: public health products and an understanding of microbes, in Johnson & Johnson’s Red Cross Messenger for retail pharmacists and Red Cross Notes, the company’s scientific journal.

Image courtesy: Johnson & Johnson Archives

The earliest records of what we know today as Spring cleaning date from thousands of years in the past and are rooted in cultural and religious traditions from the Middle East and China. In the 19th century, the warmer weather of early Spring enabled people to open doors and windows to air out and thoroughly clean homes of dust and residue from coal stoves and fireplaces before insects made their regular annual appearance. But it wasn’t until the discovery of germ theory that Spring cleaning took on a new dimension. French scientist Louis Pasteur’s experiments showing that invisible germs were the cause of infection opened new, science-based avenues for improving public health, as did German microbiologist Robert Koch’s identification in the 1880s and 1890s of the specific germs that caused diseases like anthrax, tuberculosis, and cholera.

Industrial steam sterilizer at Johnson & Johnson, 1893-1895. The company pioneered industrial steam sterilization in 1890, based on the work of Pasteur and Koch.

Image courtesy: Johnson & Johnson Archives

Germ Theory and Public Health

The founding of Johnson & Johnson in 1886 to make the first mass produced sterile surgical products owes its inspiration to the scientific breakthrough of germ theory. Louis Pasteur’s discovery found practical application in Sir Joseph Lister’s pioneering practice of sterile surgery, and Lister’s 1876 lecture on sterile surgery inspired the founding of Johnson & Johnson. So it was only natural that Johnson & Johnson would take up the cause of public health early in the company’s history, with a range of products and science-based information for frontline health workers and the public. 

Johnson & Johnson Scientific Director Fred Kilmer and 1913 award presented to him by the New Brunswick Board of Health.

Image courtesy: Johnson & Johnson Archives

From the company’s inception, Johnson & Johnson has identified unmet needs and innovated to meet them. When Scientific Director Fred Kilmer joined Johnson & Johnson in 1889, he brought with him his public health expertise and the company began working to meet unmet needs in public health. Kilmer, a pharmaceutical chemist and former retail pharmacist, had been a co-founder of the New Brunswick, New Jersey Board of Health. He and his fellow Board of Health members helped bring public health and sanitation to New Brunswick, working to address unsanitary conditions, eliminate disease vectors like open sewers and contaminated water, and improve the health of the city’s residents. Under Kilmer’s leadership, Johnson & Johnson began addressing unmet needs in public health based on practical applications of germ theory. The company’s approach was three-pronged: putting public health products on the market for frontline health workers and the public; distributing free science-based public health information; and educating employees, who would then put these public health principles into practice in their families and communities.

Section of a 1903 Johnson & Johnson public health pamphlet about combating smallpox.

Image courtesy: Johnson & Johnson Archives

Beginning in the 1890s, Johnson & Johnson introduced a variety of public health products including Camphenol, a disinfectant; Synol, an antiseptic soap; sputum cups to help prevent the spread of tuberculosis, fumigators designed to help rid the home of disease-carrying insects, vaccination sets for doctors and nurses that included sterilizable needles and syringes, vaccination dressings, mass produced epidemic masks during the 1918 influenza pandemic, and Lister’s Dog Soap, to help people rid their pets of disease-carrying insects. These products were sold at local retail pharmacies where frontline health workers and members of the public could find them.

Early Johnson & Johnson public health products, 1890s-1920s.

Image courtesy: Johnson & Johnson Archives

In the era before antibiotics and most vaccines, there was little the public could do to eradicate contagious diseases, which swept devastatingly through the population every year. With very few vaccines, the remedies in that era were centered on prevention through sanitation, quarantining and education. Along with the products, Johnson & Johnson published free science-based public health information that included contagious disease bulletins for typhoid, diphtheria, measles, smallpox, whooping cough, polio, influenza, tuberculosis and more. These bulletins were made available to boards of health, physicians, and the public, and contained the latest information about how to recognize and treat symptoms and quarantine the infected if necessary.

Johnson & Johnson Typhoid Fever bulletin from 1901 and ad in the Red Cross Messenger listing the Contagious Disease Bulletins available from Johnson & Johnson, 1910s.

Image courtesy: Johnson & Johnson Archives

Scientific Director Fred Kilmer held educational classes for employees that taught them basic germ theory and public health. Employees had to pass a written exam at the end of the class. The exam questions illustrated the major public health concerns of the era. They included questions on the treatment of tuberculosis and on vaccination for smallpox, how various contagious diseases were spread, how to prevent the spread of scarlet fever, typhoid, measles, diphtheria, and more. The exam also included a question on the importance of house cleaning to help prevent the spread of infectious disease. Employees could then spread that knowledge among their families and communities to help improve public health.

Window of a New Hampshire pharmacy in 1916 featuring Johnson & Johnson products and focusing on health education, preparedness and public health.

Image courtesy: Johnson & Johnson Archives

Public Health Preparedness

The 1910s and the United States’ 1917 entry into World War I brought an increased focus on preparedness to American households, including first aid and disease prevention – a defense of the home against injury and disease. Johnson & Johnson was a leader in both of those public health areas, having put on the market the first commercial first aid kits in 1888 and the first commercial first aid manuals in 1901. In 1917, the company worked with retail pharmacists nationwide to sponsor national Clean Up Weeks, focused on public health in the home. These national Clean Up Weeks emphasized the importance of Spring cleaning to protect families’ health and positioned the company and local retail pharmacists as trusted partners in making public health products and information available. A 1917 Johnson & Johnson national magazine ad, titled “For Your Clean-Up Week,” began by stating: “From dirt and darkness come germs which cause sickness, disease and epidemic. From the same source also come insects and vermin which spread these germs.” [Johnson & Johnson ad, “For Your Clean-Up Week, 1917.]  The March 1917 issue of The Red Cross Messenger, the company’s publication for retail pharmacists, further explained:

“Such events as the infantile paralysis epidemic of last year have quickened the interest of the public in the proper protection of their homes against disease germs…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 aim to protect their homes, to make them safe for their children. They know that dirt, darkness and disease are partners, and that they are striking a blow at disease when they attack dirt and darkness.” [The Red Cross Messenger, Johnson & Johnson, Vol. IX, No. 5, March 1917, p. 132]

Helping protect your home: Clean Up Week ad and Household Hand Book, 1917.

Image courtesy: Johnson & Johnson Archives

The Clean Up Week campaigns urged people to clean and disinfect the following places inside their homes during Clean Up Week: ceilings, floor, doors, closets, garrets, windows, baseboards, cupboards, stairways, cellars, window frames, window sashes and glass. Outside the house, people were advised to clear brush and rubbish in back yards, clean outhouse vaults and sewers, stagnant pools, gutters, barnyards, chicken houses, drains, stables and dog houses. The 1917 Clean Up Week ad encouraged people to write to Johnson & Johnson to receive a free copy of The Household Hand Book, the company’s public health booklet. The booklet included information on recognizing the symptoms of a variety of contagious diseases, home treatment and quarantining the sickroom, when to call the doctor, how to use the company’s public health products and basic first aid information. Along with Johnson & Johnson’s first aid manuals, The Household Hand Book was an important source of factual, science based health information in the home. Both were edited by Scientific Director Fred Kilmer.

Image courtesy: Johnson & Johnson Archives

The first page of The Household Hand Book had spaces for families to write the addresses of their doctor, hospital, local pharmacist and police, with instructions to send a quick messenger to request assistance if needed. (In that era, many homes did not yet have a telephone.) The Hand Book explained infectious diseases and how they were spread, as well as how to avoid them, while cautioning readers that treatment should always be carried out by a doctor. Among the specific illnesses covered in the book were scarlet fever, typhoid, smallpox, whooping cough, chicken pox, diphtheria, measles and mumps, all of which took an immense toll on the population each year. With oral hygiene having been added to the national public health agenda in the 1910s, the book also included a section on oral health, called “The Everyday Care of the Teeth,” advising people to brush their teeth at least twice daily and see a dentist regularly, since good oral health was imperative to help maintain overall health, a concept that was not widely understood by the public in the 1910s. Johnson & Johnson’s advice in The Household Hand Book was based on germ theory, the scientific advancement behind many of the company’s early innovations:  “It is known beyond question,” stated the Hand Book, that germs from untreated chronic dental abscesses and other conditions “may find lodgement in some remote part of the body where conditions are favorable for their propagation, and there produce trouble that has never through ordinary diagnosis been traced to the mouth or teeth for its origin.” [The Household Hand Book, Johnson & Johnson, 1917, p. 23]

The first aid section of The Household Hand Book covered basic first aid and also provided advice on how to avoid accidents. Some of the advice, like always looking in the direction in which you are moving, is timeless; other advice, like “Have your horse rough shod as soon as the ground freezes,” reflected daily life for many people in the 1910s. Interspersed with the public health information was information about Johnson & Johnson’s public health and wound care products, along with information on where to find them. (Hint: it was your local retail pharmacy.)

Ad and bottles of Camphenol, a Johnson & Johnson public health product, circa 1900-1905.

Image courtesy: Johnson & Johnson Archives

Today, more than a century after the publication of The Household Hand Book and the Clean Up Week ads to popularize Spring cleaning as a public health measure, Johnson & Johnson’s large global public health organization works worldwide to fight infectious diseases like tuberculosis, HIV-AIDS, Ebola and COVID-19 with medicines and vaccines, as well as treating intestinal worm infections that affect underserved children worldwide due to poor sanitation and contaminated soil and water. Since 2006 Johnson & Johnson has donated over two billion doses of VERMOX®, the company’s medicine for intestinal worms, to some of the most vulnerable children in need around the world and provides information and education to reduce intestinal worm infections. Other public health efforts center on mental health, working to reduce maternal mortality around the world and Black maternal mortality in the U.S., and supporting frontline health workers. Although so much has changed since Scientific Director Fred Kilmer first brought his public health expertise to Johnson & Johnson more than 130 years ago, public health continues to be a vital part of human health, and Johnson & Johnson continues its leadership commitments in this area.

It’s one of the most iconic consumer product packages in history: the BAND-AID^® Brand Adhesive Bandages tin. Beginning in 1926, these beautiful tins were repurposed to hold a variety of items in households through the decades, and they are prized by collectors today.

The first BAND-AID® Brand Adhesive Bandages package from 1921.

Image courtesy: Johnson & Johnson Archives

Before the invention of BAND-AID^® Brand Adhesive Bandages, families bandaged small injuries with makeshift methods, like strips of rag. But in 1920, Johnson & Johnson employee Earle Dickson invented the BAND-AID^® Brand Adhesive Bandage to help his wife bandage the small cuts and burns she got while preparing meals in the kitchen. Earle’s invention was the first premade commercial dressing for small wounds. So how do you package a game-changing innovation? For the first five years BAND-AID^® Brand Adhesive Bandages were on the market, they were packaged in a blue cardboard box: packaging that was simple and functional, but hard to carry with you in a pocket or purse. So in 1926, the first BAND-AID^® Brand Adhesive Bandages tins made their appearance: flat, square tins with three-step instructions printed on the inside of the lid to show consumers how to use this revolutionary new product – and an iconic package was born. Here’s a look at some of the most memorable tins and boxes from the product’s long history.

From left to right: BAND-AID® Brand Adhesive Bandages square tin, 1926; BAND-AID® Brand Adhesive Bandages Speed Bandage tin and Spanish Language BAND-AID® Brand Adhesive Bandages square tin, circa 1926 to 1930s.

Image courtesy: Johnson & Johnson Archives

These flat metal tins – the oldest and rarest of the tins for this product, were produced from 1926 until the early 1930s. The last tin of this shape was for BAND-AID^® Brand DryBak Adhesive Bandages in the early 1930s. The eye-catching new graphics were designed to provide a distinctive new look for a brand-new product innovation: the first waterproof BAND-AID^® Brand Adhesive Bandage.

BAND-AID® Brand DryBak Adhesive Bandages square tin from, 1932 and vertical tin, early to mid-1930s.

Image courtesy: Johnson & Johnson Archives

While the flat product tins of the 1920s were ideal for people taking BAND-AID^® Brand Adhesive Bandages with them on their travels, it was the advent of the rectangular vertical tins in the 1930s that led this distinctive package to become part of people’s families for generations: once the product inside was used, the beautifully decorated tin container was perfect for storing small household items – buttons and pins in sewing kits, nails, screws and washers in workshops, and marbles, baseball cards and other small toys and collectibles in children’s rooms.  Over the decades, the tins themselves became collectibles.

The earliest upright tins in the 1930s had a lid that slid open horizontally, before the brand switched to the more familiar hinged lid. These tins feature one of the most beautiful package designs in the product’s long history. Each product innovation was packaged in a tin with a variation on the 1930s design, each instantly recognizable to consumers. If you have an old BAND-AID^® Brand Adhesive Bandages tin with one of these distinctive basketweave designs, it’s from the 1930s to circa 1940.

Three BAND-AID® Brand Adhesive Bandages vintage tins from the 1930s, among the most distinctive and beautiful of the historic tins.

Image courtesy: Johnson & Johnson Archives

In the 1940s the packaging changed again to a simpler, though no less beautiful design using red, black, white, and gray.  Shortages of raw materials during World War II led Johnson & Johnson to package the product in wartime cardboard containers for several years beginning in 1942.  Johnson & Johnson shipped more than 20 million BAND-AID^® Brand Adhesive Bandages overseas to U.S. troops, along with the company’s first aid kits and medical supplies, and BAND-AID^® Brand Adhesive Bandages became an essential part of soldiers’ kits.

Three BAND-AID® Brand Adhesive Bandages rare tins from the 1940s. Left: rare cylindrical cardboard container with metal top, circa 1940; center: one of the most visually striking of the vintage tin designs, circa 1940-1942; right: a tin from circa 1948-1949.

Image courtesy: Johnson & Johnson Archives

The postwar economic boom of the late 1940s and 1950s brought a wide variety of changes to society: an array of new consumer products and household conveniences in the home, the construction of interstate highways and schools, new technologies like computers in the workplace, and a record number of babies born in the United States – approximately 77 million between 1946 and 1964. It naturally follows that first decorated BAND-AID^® Brand Adhesive Bandages made their debut during this time, as did Johnson & Johnson’s first television sponsorships.

The first decorated BAND-AID® Brand Adhesive Bandages, Stars ‘n Strips and Charmers tins, which made their debut in 1956.

Image courtesy: Johnson & Johnson Archives

With the exception of the brightly colored designs on the tins for decorated BAND-AID^® Brand Adhesive Bandages, the 1950s continued the trend of midcentury BAND-AID^® Brand Adhesive Bandages metal tins with clean, minimalist designs influenced by the midcentury modern movement, paired with bold, memorable graphics.

BAND-AID® Brand Adhesive Bandages Cloth Strips and Plastic Strips tins from the 1950s showing the influence of midcentury modern design.

Image courtesy: Johnson & Johnson Archives

One of those sponsorships for a popular children’s television show saw BAND-AID^® Brand offer a special collectible trading card for kids in each product tin, as well as a contest to win a trip to the United Kingdom, where the series was filmed on location.  There were special in-store promotions, and the show’s lead actor came to Johnson & Johnson to meet employees. The adhesive bandages in those vintage packages were a special shade of forest green.

BAND-AID® Brand Plastic Strips tin and trading card from the 1950s.

Image courtesy: Johnson & Johnson Archives

Whenever the brand introduced an innovation to consumers, it was packaged in a newly-designed tin. Perhaps the most memorable and iconic of those midcentury tins made its debut in the late 1950s with another innovation from the brand: sheer adhesive bandages.

BAND-AID® Brand Adhesive Bandages Sheer Strips tins from 1957. These distinctive, elegant and eye-catching tins held the product from the late 1950s to the mid-1960s.

Image courtesy: Johnson & Johnson Archives

The decade of the 1960s brought with it the space program and rapid cultural and societal change, and BAND-AID® Brand Adhesive Bandages played their part: the product went into space with the Apollo 8 mission to orbit the Moon in 1968 and the Apollo 11 mission in 1969 to land on the Moon as part of the astronauts’ medical kits. This era also saw the debut of the iconic and familiar red, white and blue BAND-AID® Brand Adhesive Bandages tin beloved by those who grew up in the 1960s and 1970s. These red, white and blue tins instantly call back memories of childhood for millions of people.  Updated versions of that tin remained part of the household in the 1980s and 1990s, along with new varieties of decorated adhesive bandages, including Hot Colors and Glow in the Dark, introduced in the 1990s and each in their own distinctive and attractive tin.

BAND-AID® Brand Adhesive Bandages Sheer Strips and Plastic Strips tins from the 1960s and 1970s. These familiar and iconic red, white and blue tins were found in millions of medicine cabinets.

Image courtesy: Johnson & Johnson Archives

The 1990s brought another change to the product’s package:  BAND-AID^® Brand Adhesive Bandages switched permanently to more sustainable cardboard packaging in 1994, but the brand has continued to bring its iconic tins back for some memorable anniversaries and special partnerships. Today, BAND-AID^® Brand Adhesive Bandages tins are prized by collectors. Some fans of this iconic product package boast collections numbering in the hundreds, while others continue to use the vintage and newer special edition tins to hold BAND-AID^® Brand Adhesive Bandages, or small family treasures, or as home decor. Recently, the brand introduced a set of limited edition commemorative tins for its 100^th anniversary. Whether it’s a new special edition tin or an historic one, this iconic package continues to occupy a special place in people’s homes and hearts. If you have an antique or vintage BAND-AID^® Brand Adhesive Bandages tin that you would like help dating or you would like to learn more about, please let us know by reaching out to our artifacts mailbox. 

BAND-AID® Brand Adhesive Bandages 85th Anniversary tin from 2005, and Limited Edition BAND-AID® Brand Adhesive Bandages 100th anniversary tin from 2020.

Image courtesy: Johnson & Johnson Archives

In 2015 Johnson & Johnson launched its WiSTEM²D initiative, designed to encourage girls and women to pursue science and technical careers. (WiSTEM²D stands for Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, Math, Manufacturing and Design.) But the history of women in technological and scientific roles at Johnson & Johnson dates back more than a century before that.

Founded in 1886 to make the first mass produced sterile surgical dressings and sterile sutures, Johnson & Johnson opened its doors with just 14 employees – eight of whom were women. Since then, the company has had a high percentage of women employees, and today women make up 45% of the company’s more than 130,000 global associates.

In the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, very few women worked in science and technical fields. Women who worked outside of the home were largely confined to domestic and factory work, teaching and nursing. But in that era, one of the company’s original 14 employees, Mathilda D---, was the first female employee at Johnson & Johnson in a STEM²D field. As the tiny startup founded by the Johnson brothers grew, Mathilda earned increasingly greater responsibilities, supervising a manufacturing department by 1908.

An old Aseptic Dressings Seal signed by Elizabeth W---. Image courtesy: Johnson & Johnson Archives

Image courtesy: Johnson & Johnson Archives

For Johnson & Johnson to accomplish the manufacture of its sterile surgical products, the company had to pioneer sterile industrial manufacturing. In 1897, graduate nurse Elizabeth W--- was the head nurse in the company’s Aseptic Department. She supervised quality and ensured that employees followed the department’s strict rules for asepsis, which included scrubbing in like a modern surgeon, the wearing of sterile uniforms and keeping everything surgically clean in an era when many doctors still operated in grimy germ-filled frock coats without washing their hands.  The rules and procedures in the Aseptic Department were demanding and highly technical, created by Johnson & Johnson Scientific Director Fred Kilmer and based on the emerging scientific disciplines of asepsis and bacteriology. Elizabeth, along with Kilmer, also had the responsibility of signing the sterility seals that were placed across the tops of the company’s sterile surgical dressings.

A photo of the desk of Cotton Finishing Department supervisor, Miss Reed, 1910.

Image courtesy: Johnson & Johnson Archives

In 1908, more than a decade before women earned the right to vote in the United States, eight out of 36 department supervisors at Johnson & Johnson were women. Those eight women were in charge of manufacturing departments that included the company’s pioneering Aseptic Department -- supervised by Nora H--- -- where the company’s sterile surgical products were made. The Aseptic Department was the jewel in the company’s manufacturing crown: as the first sterile industrial manufacturing department, it was frequently visited by medical professionals, and was run and largely staffed by highly skilled and trained women employees.

Edith von Kuster, and a corner of the Johnson & Johnson Scientific Department Lab.

Image courtesy: . Image of Edith von Kuster courtesy of her family.; lab image courtesy Johnson & Johnson Archives

That same year, 1908, Johnson & Johnson took a step even further: the company hired its first female scientist, chemist Edith von Kuster, recruiting her from the University of Minnesota. Predominant occupations for women in the workforce in 1908 were still the same: teaching, nursing, and domestic and factory work. At that time, few American women attended a four-year college, with even fewer majoring in science, and career opportunities for women scientists were confined to teaching and research; in industry, they were virtually nonexistent at the time.

Women continued to lead the company’s sterile surgical products manufacturing – a non-traditional role for women and a highly technical responsibility in an era when those types of opportunities for women were extremely unusual.  In 1927, Edith H---, head of the Ligature Department at Johnson & Johnson (our sterile suture manufacturing department), was sent by the company to Slough, England to train employees at the company’s new U.K. operating unit in the manufacture of sterile sutures. In the era before commercial air travel, Edith traveled to the U.K. by steamship to do the training.

In 1930, Katherine H--- was promoted to Director of the Medicated Dressing Department (the new name for the Aseptic Department) at Johnson & Johnson, a position she held until the mid-1940s. Katherine was a graduate of the management and supervisory training program put into place by company co-founder Robert Wood Johnson, and she is credited with being the first person at Johnson & Johnson to implement a manufacturing production schedule, dramatically increasing productivity and raising wages for the women in her department.

Bacteriology Lab supervisor Jeanne C--- in the lab, 1947.

Image courtesy: Johnson & Johnson Archives

Millions of women stepped up to fill the ranks of technical and manufacturing fields in the U.S. during World War II, constructing ships and building and repairing airplanes, among other work. But in the postwar era, women were again pushed back into more traditional roles in society.  Despite this trend, women continued to work as scientists at Johnson & Johnson, not only as chemists and bacteriologists, but as lab supervisors like scientist Jeanne C---, who supervised the company’s bacteriology lab from 1944 to 1949.  In 1961, when the percentage of working women in science was still small, scientist Edythe L--- supervised the Johnson & Johnson Research Center Bacteriology Lab.

Women in STEM fields at Johnson & Johnson, from left to right: Edythe L-- in the lab, 1961; bacteriologist Phyllis L--- in the lab, 1969; and Dr. Alice R---, 1972.

Image courtesy: Johnson & Johnson Archives

One of the company’s pioneering women research scientists to achieve a senior management position was Dr. Alice R---, who became the first female operating company board member at Johnson & Johnson in 1972. In 1966 Dr. R--- was the first woman to receive the Ortho Research Fellow Award and in 1970 she earned the Ortho Distinguished Contribution Award for her role in developing a revolutionary slide test for pregnancy.

Scientist at JLABS in San Francisco, one of Johnson & Johnson’s life science incubators around the world that provide lab space and resources for early stage innovation.

Image courtesy: JLABS

Today, Johnson & Johnson has many women in senior leadership and STEM²D positions.  With women still making up less than 30% of those engaged in science research and development, and only 12% of U.S. employees in engineering careers, Johnson & Johnson has more than 11 partnerships worldwide to increase the number of undergraduate women majoring in STEM fields to help address the need for women in technical and scientific careers.  In 2017, Johnson & Johnson launched Re-Ignite, a paid career reentry program for professionals in STEM²D careers who want to return to the workforce after having been out for at least two years.  The program provides skills training and support from mentors at Johnson & Johnson, and participants can be considered for a full-time role in the company. From 2017 to 2019, five women completed returnships and were hired across the company in STEM fields. Johnson & Johnson is also partnering with Girl Scouts of the USA in support of the Think Like a Citizen Scientist Journey, which prepares girls to experiment, explore their environment, and learn how they can improve the world through STEM. The program also funds training materials to help troop leaders increase girls’ interest in science, technology, engineering and math and increase their confidence and abilities in those areas. Johnson & Johnson’s focus on empowering women to purse and excel in STEM²D careers continues a heritage that goes back to one of the company’s founding employees.

Johnson & Johnson co-founder Edward Mead Wood Johnson (1852-1934) was born April 23, 1852 at the family’s farm in Crystal Lake, Pennsylvania. He was the brother of Johnson & Johnson co-founders Robert Wood Johnson and James Wood Johnson.

Edward Mead Johnson began his career as a schoolteacher in a rural school for a year before leaving to study law at the University of Michigan, graduating with a law degree in 1876.  In 1878, at age 26, he joined his brother Robert’s partnership of Seabury & Johnson as a “traveler,” or salesman for several months before moving to the company’s advertising department.  In late 1885, he and his brothers left Seabury & Johnson to start Johnson & Johnson.  Along with James Wood Johnson, Edward Mead Johnson is one of the two founders represented in the Johnson & Johnson name.

Edward Mead Johnson

Image courtesy: Johnson & Johnson Archives

Edward Mead Johnson was in charge of sales and marketing at Johnson & Johnson, working out of the company’s early New York City office, first at 23 Cedar Street – a long, narrow office space two blocks from Wall Street, and then a few years later, around the corner at 92 William Street, while his brother James oversaw manufacturing operations in New Brunswick.  One of Edward Mead Johnson’s responsibilities was to prepare the sales catalogs and price lists for the new business. 

Johnson & Johnson New York Office, 92 William Street.

Image courtesy: Johnson & Johnson Archives

In 1886, Manhattan was still in the process of urbanizing, with farmland and farmhouses giving way to graded streets and stone and brick buildings, along with new skyscrapers.  Horse-drawn streetcars, carriages and taxis filled the streets, along with pedestrians. Lower Manhattan was the city’s – and the nation’s – economic center, with many firms locating their administrative offices in the Wall Street area, and Johnson & Johnson did the same. On Tuesday, October 26, 1886, the city celebrated the dedication of the brand-new Statue of Liberty in New York harbor with a parade and a ceremony led by President Grover Cleveland. The parade wove its way from Madison Square, down Fifth Avenue to Lower Manhattan; when it reached Wall Street, just two streets over from the Johnson & Johnson office, traders in the New York Stock Exchange threw ticker tape from the windows, inaugurating the first ticker tape parade to commemorate an important event.  The sounds of the celebration would have been unmistakable from the Johnson & Johnson office, and it’s possible that Edward Mead Johnson and the office staff could have taken a break from their working day to witness this historic occasion in person.

Page from Johnson & Johnson salesman’s portfolio, late 1800s.

Image courtesy: Johnson & Johnson Archives

The arrival of elder brother Robert Wood Johnson in September of 1886 brought his business expertise and much-needed capital into the new firm of Johnson & Johnson, leading Edward Mead Johnson to write enthusiastically to customers about the influx of energy into the new business.

Early Johnson & Johnson ad with handwritten comments by Edward Mead Johnson.

Image courtesy: Johnson & Johnson Archives

As the business grew, Edward Mead Johnson continued to focus on leading the company’s sales efforts and on his role as secretary and then treasurer of the company’s board of directors. Beginning in the 1880s, Johnson & Johnson marketed a line of products to aid digestion, based on papaya.  Edward Mead Johnson and Scientific Director Fred Kilmer shared an interested in those product lines, devoting time and energy to them. Edward Mead Johnson’s increasing interest in these products was based on his experience as a father: he had an infant son with digestive difficulties.

In 1898, increasingly focused on the company’s products to improve digestion, Edward Mead Johnson left Johnson & Johnson, taking with him the company’s digestive products business. Edward Mead Johnson’s new company began focusing on products to help infants who were unable to digest milk.  Today, that company, now called Mead Johnson Nutrition, is a leading global company in the field of infant and child nutrition, illustrating Edward Mead Johnson’s share of the brothers’ talent for starting successful businesses and focusing on meeting unmet needs. 

Ad for JOHNSON’S® Digestive Tablets, late 19th century.

Image courtesy: Johnson & Johnson Archives

Johnson & Johnson co-founder James Wood Johnson (1856-1932) was the younger brother of Johnson & Johnson founders Robert Wood Johnson and Edward Mead Johnson.  James Wood Johnson was born March 17, 1856 at Crystal Lake, Pennsylvania, the 11^th and youngest child in the Johnson family. A talented engineer, James Wood Johnson began as an apprentice surveyor with the Pennsylvania Coal Company before joining his older brother Robert at Seabury & Johnson at age 22.  Starting in sales, James quickly moved to manufacturing, where he designed and built the machinery that enabled Seabury & Johnson to mass produce its products.  He was promoted to Superintendent of Manufacturing at Seabury & Johnson, in charge of the organization’s manufacturing operations.  In late 1885, along with his brothers, James Wood Johnson left Seabury & Johnson to start Johnson & Johnson. 

James Wood Johnson

Image courtesy: Johnson & Johnson Archives

In January of 1886, James Wood Johnson was a passenger on a westbound train from New York to Pennsylvania.  En route, the train stopped in the small city of New Brunswick, New Jersey, home to Rutgers University and a variety of local industries, many of which would become suppliers of packaging to Johnson & Johnson.  Johnson looked out the window of the train and saw a four-story brick building available for rent, located about 150 feet from the street-level railroad tracks. Johnson rented the fourth floor of the building for the brothers’ new company. New Brunswick, with its central location between New York and Philadelphia, as well as the transportation afforded by the railroad, the Raritan River and Delaware-Raritan Canal, was an excellent location for the new business.

Map of Johnson & Johnson campus, 1908, showing first Johnson & Johnson building from 1886 at upper left -- marked No. 22.

Image courtesy: Johnson & Johnson Archives

The company’s first building – whose site remains part of Johnson & Johnson’s New Brunswick campus today – was a small, tin roofed former wallpaper factory with arched windows, dating originally to the 1860s. While Edward Mead Johnson set up the company’s sales office at 32 Cedar Street in Manhattan, James Wood Johnson assembled the company’s manufacturing operations in New Brunswick, designing and building manufacturing machinery and hiring employees.  A 200-horsepower engine in the basement provided power for the new company’s manufacturing equipment. Johnson & Johnson began operations in this building with 14 employees in 1886 – eight women and six men, all hired by James Wood Johnson. One of those first eight women employees, M. S. Denman, would be promoted to supervise one of the company’s manufacturing departments.

Illustration of first Johnson & Johnson building, 1886

Image courtesy: Johnson & Johnson Archives

On March 25, 1886, James Wood Johnson wrote the first check from Johnson & Johnson to John Ware, the freight master for the Pennsylvania Railroad, for the shipping of raw materials, signifying the beginning of the company’s manufacturing operations.  Johnson’s distinctive way of writing the company name on the check – with the ampersand connected to the second “J” –evolved into the distinctive Johnson & Johnson script logo, based on his handwriting. As the company grew and expanded in New Brunswick, James Wood Johnson continued to lead manufacturing, designing additional manufacturing machinery and working with Scientific Director Fred Kilmer to design the company’s pioneering sterile manufacturing facilities, as well as holding patents for product packaging design.

First check from Johnson & Johnson, March 25, 1886, signed by James Wood Johnson.

Image courtesy: Johnson & Johnson Archives

When Robert Wood Johnson passed away in 1910, James Wood Johnson was named president of the company, a position he held until 1932. Under his leadership, Johnson & Johnson continued its steady growth, supplying dressings, bandages and battlefield wound treatments during World War I and introducing products such as BAND-AID® Brand Adhesive Bandages in 1921.

James Wood Johnson, early 20th century.

Image courtesy: Johnson & Johnson Archives

Johnson & Johnson co-founder Robert Wood Johnson (1845-1910) was born into a world before sterile surgery and sanitary wound care. He would have a profound impact on both and help usher in modern healthcare. Robert Wood Johnson was born on February 20, 1845 in Crystal Lake, Pennsylvania, the eighth child of 11 children in a large family. In 1845, the United States was less than a century old.  It was still largely rural, with more citizens living on farms than in cities. The year of Johnson’s birth would see the addition of Florida and Texas as the 27^th and 28^th states of the United States. When Robert Wood Johnson was nine years old, Florence Nightingale instituted sanitary conditions in European military hospitals during the Crimean War. In the early 1860s, French scientist Louis Pasteur’s experiments on fermentation led to the discovery of germ theory, the recognition that disease and infection were caused by tiny microbes too small to be seen with the naked eye, a revolutionary step forward in the understanding of the causes of infection.  In the United States, the 1861 start of the Civil War led two of Robert’s older brothers to enlist in the Union Army.  Anxious to protect Robert, his parents apprenticed the young teenager at Wood & Tittamer, a retail pharmacy in Poughkeepsie, New York belonging to his mother’s cousin James Wood. This pharmacy apprenticeship would give Robert Wood Johnson a career in a growing field that would be revolutionized by the scientific developments of the 19^th century.  At Wood & Tittamer, Johnson learned to make medicated plasters – adhesive patches that delivered medicine directly through the skin, a popular 19^th century product. He later would go on to perfect their manufacture, instituting innovations that that improved their efficacy and quality and allowed them to be mass produced by machine rather than made by hand. 

Johnson & Johnson co-founder Robert Wood Johnson.

Image courtesy: Johnson & Johnson Archives

Moving to New York City at age 19, Robert Wood Johnson went to work for drug wholesaler James Scott Aspinwall at 86 William Street in lower Manhattan. Interested in ideas, Johnson had a circle of friends that included science fiction writer Edward Page Mitchell and advertising pioneer J. Walter Thompson, both creative thinkers whose concepts would go on to help shape the 20^th century. In 1874, Robert Wood Johnson formed a business partnership with George J. Seabury. Seabury & Johnson quickly became a successful and respected maker of medicated plasters and other health care products. In 1876, Robert attended the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition, the first World’s Fair in the United States, a celebration of the country’s 100^th birthday highlighting American innovation and progress. New inventions making their debut at the Centennial Exposition included the world’s largest Corliss steam engine, soda water, popcorn, Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone, and the first mechanical dishwasher. It was attended by roughly ten million visitors – about a fifth of the entire U.S. population at the time; also among the attendees was Dr. Joseph Lawrence, the inventor of LISTERINE^® Antiseptic. 

Wood & Tittamer, Poughkeepsie, N.Y.

Image courtesy: Johnson & Johnson Archives

Johnson attended a lecture at the Medical Congress by English surgeon Sir Joseph Lister, the father of modern antiseptic surgery. Lister had performed the first sterile surgical wound treatment in 1865 by applying Louis Pasteur’s groundbreaking germ theory to surgery, developing the practice of sterile surgery.  Surgery before Lister was not sterile, with surgeons operating in street clothing without washing their hands, using non-sterile dressings and unsterilized instruments, leading to surgical infection rates greater than 90% at some hospitals.  Lister lectured for three hours, explaining his sterile surgical technique in detail to an audience of skeptical doctors. His talk inspired Robert Wood Johnson to pursue the development and manufacture of the first mass produced sterile surgical dressings and sterile sutures to help reduce post-surgical infection rates in American hospitals and make surgery sterile and survivable for patients.

Illustration of one of the buildings at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition

Image courtesy: iStock

Leaving Seabury & Johnson in late 1885, younger brothers James Wood Johnson and Edward Mead Johnson started Johnson & Johnson in 1886, with Robert joining a few months later. Robert’s outgoing personality led to a friendship with New Brunswick pharmacist and pharmaceutical chemist Fred Kilmer, who would become the Director of Scientific Affairs for Johnson & Johnson from 1889 to 1934. In 1887, Johnson & Johnson put on the market the first mass produced sterile surgical dressings and sterile sutures.  Additional innovations rapidly followed that helped shape modern health and personal care.  These included the first commercial first aid kits in 1888, maternity kits to make childbirth safer in 1894, the first mass produced women’s sanitary protection products in 1897, oral care products and more.  Johnson also put in place far reaching and comprehensive benefits for employees at Johnson & Johnson, including in 1898 support for employees who serve in the military, onsite medical care in 1906, free hot meals for night shift manufacturing workers in 1909, insurance, and more.  Under Johnson’s leadership, the progressive values of the company took shape, and included management training open to women, the hiring of the company’s first female scientist in 1908, and the inauguration of the company’s tradition of providing disaster relief in the community in 1900 and 1906. The company’s future-oriented focus and management for the long term also have their origins with Robert Wood Johnson I. Robert Wood Johnson served as President of Johnson & Johnson from 1887 to 1910. His founding ideals would later find expression in Our Credo, written by his son Robert Wood Johnson II.

Sir Joseph Lister

Image courtesy: Johnson & Johnson Archives

A fateful conversation inspired the creation of Johnson & Johnson’s First Aid Kit, which was released in 1888. Aboard a train heading to Colorado for vacation, company founder Robert Wood Johnson struck up a conversation with the Denver & Rio Grande Railway’s chief surgeon. The doctor explained to Johnson the dangers of railroad construction and the lack of medical supplies to treat the unique industrial injuries that were often incurred great distances from hospitals. From this exchange, Johnson saw an opportunity to both advance the field of healthcare and build his young business. And from this modern need, the commercial First Aid Kit was born.

Railroad first aid demonstration, c. 1895.

Image courtesy: Johnson & Johnson Archives

Railroad construction during the 19th century brought workers to isolated regions in the American West, away from hospitals and traditional medical care. The First Transcontinental Railroad was completed in 1869 and in the decades that followed, expansion continued at a fever pitch. Between 1880 and 1890, more than 70,000 miles of new tracks were laid. The frenzied construction in rural, rugged areas across the American West ensured accidents were common and, when disaster struck, it was often fatal. About 12,000 railroad workers and operators died each year. Not only was the cutting-edge machinery creating new injuries, but medical care on the frontier was virtually nonexistent. Additionally, working on steam locomotives was so dangerous that trains began carrying surgeons, and later, medical cars for treatment. In the 1880s, along the 1,300-mile stretch between St. Louis, Missouri, and El Paso, Texas, there was not one hospital. So it’s no surprise that wounded workers frequently perished before help arrived.

Often the majority of railroad worker crews were immigrants hailing from China, Ireland, and Eastern Europe.

Image courtesy: Alfred A. Hart, Library of Congress

To fill the desperate need for adequate emergency care, railroad companies began employing their own doctors. Since there was no textbook for the injuries they encountered, these physicians had to learn surgery on the job and improvise trauma care along the way. They creatively dealt with new injuries, among the most common was “crushed limbs.” These men were often champions of new technology—they were early champions of Joseph Lister’s sterile surgery. However, putting this theory into practice and keeping wounds germ-free proved challenging. Initially, few had operating rooms or antiseptic supplies. Even after the railway surgeons convinced companies to build hospitals and sterile environments in the West, death tolls remained high.

Among the first railroad company-built hospitals was the Denver & Rio Grande’s Hospital in Salida, Colorado, which opened in 1885.

Image courtesy: Salida Regional Library, Salida, Colorado

The missing links were educated first responders and antiseptic first aid supplies. On railroad construction sites, untrained laborers who knew little of basic hygiene, let alone wound care, were the first to take action when disaster struck. Naturally, they rushed to help, but their 
attempts often did more harm than good—exacerbating spinal injuries or introducing infection.

When Robert Wood Johnson heard about this problem, he had the idea of packaging Johnson & Johnson’s sterile surgical products in boxes that could be kept with railway workers to treat injuries. Johnson wrote to top railway surgeons asking for their advice about what they needed in the kits. He then called upon Johnson & Johnson’s scientific director, Fred Kilmer, to translate these needs into a product. Kilmer was a practiced pharmacist and scientist whose meticulous research on railroad medicine gave rise to Johnson & Johnson’s inaugural First Aid Kit in 1888. Kilmer was a visionary in the field who saw the kits as a way to bridge the gap between injury and treatment. He understood the need not only for sterile supplies but also for the education of the public to ensure that injuries were treated—not intensified—in the first minutes.

Originally, Johnson & Johnson manufactured First Aid Kits tailored to the unique needs of individual railroad companies.

Image courtesy: Johnson & Johnson Archives

The first kits were packed in durable wooden or metal boxes and equipped with a variety of existing Johnson & Johnson surgical products, including gauze, adhesive plasters, dressing, bandages, and sutures. Because they were tailored to the unique needs of railroad construction, they also necessitated the addition of new supplies.

Early Hand Book of First Aid.

Image courtesy: Johnson & Johnson Archives

However, Kilmer knew that the kits, themselves, were not enough. They needed to include explanation and training. Since its founding, Johnson & Johnson had prided itself on educating the public and spreading antiseptic methods of wound care; first aid was another teaching opportunity. In 1901, Johnson & Johnson published the Hand Book of First Aid, the nation’s first comprehensive, commercially available guide to first aid. The guide reached beyond the railroad and medical industries, teaching Americans about basic hygiene and emergency care. Through illustrations and common emergency scenarios, it showed readers how to use Johnson & Johnson products to save lives. But, this manual did more than educate; it spurred a movement. In the years that followed, similar guides proliferated. As interest in emergency care took root, Johnson & Johnson’s First Aid Kits became increasingly popular.

Though Johnson & Johnson didn’t invent the Esmarch bandage, the product was popularized in the company’s First Aid Kit. Directions were cleverly printed on the bandage itself so they could never be lost.

Image courtesy: Johnson & Johnson Archives

Within a decade, first aid became the law—all American workplaces with more than three employees were required to have basic medical supplies starting in 1910. Throughout the 20th century, First Aid Kits were expanded to meet new needs. They were customized for homes, schools, travelers and the workplace. And as technology advanced, Johnson & Johnson was there: in cars and on planes. From the late 19th century through today, Johnson & Johnson’s First Aid Kits remain the standard in emergency care.

Over the course of his prolific career at the company, Frederick Barnett Kilmer defined Johnson & Johnson, influencing virtually every aspect of the business. Before joining the company, he was a retail pharmacist, scientist, writer, and public health pioneer who moved to New Brunswick, New Jersey, in 1879. During his 45 years at Johnson & Johnson, he expanded its scientific research and laboratories, pioneered large-scale industrial sterilization, and inaugurated publications and products to improve public health.

Kilmer was born in Connecticut in 1851 and moved to New Brunswick with his wife, Annie, at the age of 28. They would have four children and, tragically, survive them all.

Image courtesy: Johnson & Johnson Archives

From his earliest days in New Brunswick, Kilmer was a champion of public health. He co-founded the Board of Public Health to improve sanitation and clean up the water supply soon after he’d arrived in the city. Like most places at that time, New Brunswick had limited sanitation. Raw sewage drained directly from houses into the streets. This lack of basic cleanliness caused the spread of deadly disease. This was a time before antibiotics or most vaccines, so once an outbreak began, it was difficult to stop. It was within this community that Kilmer began his drive to improve public health.

On the far left stands Fred Kilmer outside of his Opera House Pharmacy. Among the business’ regular patrons was famed inventor, Thomas Alva Edison, who frequently bought supplies from the pharmacy to build his creations. By the 1880s, Edison's workshop was nearby in Menlo Park, New Jersey.

Image courtesy: Johnson & Johnson Archives

By trade, Kilmer was a formally educated pharmacist and scientist who owned his own local business in the early 1880s, the Opera House Pharmacy. Located on the ground floor of the stunning Victorian-style Masonic Hall, the building—as its name would suggest—was also home to the city’s opera house. It was here that he first met Johnson & Johnson founder Robert Wood Johnson, a frequent patron. Johnson had heard of Kilmer and respected his devotion to public health. 

Modern Methods of Antiseptic Wound Treatment illustrated just how crude operations were in the 1880s. Author Fred Kilmer taught the reader how to transform the kitchen table into an operating table.

Image courtesy: Johnson & Johnson Archives

Two years later, Johnson enlisted Kilmer’s help as a skilled writer and scientist to create a how-to guide on sterile surgery. The Johnson brothers had learned that it was not enough to produce antiseptic surgical supplies; they also needed to teach medical professionals how to use them. Modern Methods of Antiseptic Wound Treatment offered physicians and surgeons step-by-step directions to safely perform operations outside of hospitals. It also was a catalog of company products that were needed to accomplish these surgeries successfully. Within months of its publication, Johnson & Johnson had disseminated 85,000 copies to pharmacists and doctors across the country, free of charge. Soon, the guide became the industry standard.

New Jersey’s vast salt marshes made the state a breeding ground for disease-carrying mosquitos. To combat them, Kilmer invented the Mosquitoon, a type of fumigator (a device that used smoke to kill bugs), which as its name would suggest, specifically targeted mosquitoes.

Image courtesy: Johnson & Johnson Archives

As the company’s scientific director—beginning in 1889—Kilmer designed and promoted products to combat public health problems. At the company, he continued the forward-looking, instructive precedent that he had set with Modern Methods. Employing his skills as a scientist, Kilmer applied his expertise to invent the first industrial-scale sterilizing machines. From his earliest years, he saw public health as a natural extension of the company’s mission of saving lives by helping to make surgery sterile. Kilmer designed new products like fumigators, Mosquitoons, and antibacterial soaps to combat epidemics that still plagued the United States. Alongside these products, he wrote bulletins and published additional free information to teach families how to do their part to limit the spread of infectious disease.

In 1901, Kilmer wrote a bulletin about typhoid fever, a highly-contagious disease spread through contaminated water and food. Part of a public health initiative, his article explained basic steps locals could take to prevent its spread.

Image courtesy: Johnson & Johnson Archives

Kilmer’s dedication to public health touched all aspects of his work at Johnson & Johnson, including his writing. Among his many publications and periodicals was the country’s inaugural comprehensive, commercial Standard First Aid Manual, released in 1901. The guide spanned a broad range of topics, teaching Americans basic hygiene and emergency care. Kilmer’s manual did more than educate; it started a movement. In the years that followed, similar manuals multiplied. The guide’s popularity signaled that Americans were beginning to take an active interest in their health.

Kilmer founded the company’s Aseptic Department in the early 1900s. The department was a series of “clean rooms” where sterile surgical dressings and sutures were mass-produced in sterile conditions and sterilized using the first industrial-size machinery for the task, also of Kilmer’s design.

Image courtesy: Johnson & Johnson Archives

Beyond his many scholarly and scientific contributions, Kilmer also worked as Johnson & Johnson’s chief publicity officer for many years. In this role, he oversaw advertising and outreach, communicating with medical professionals and the public. Kilmer inaugurated and edited Red Cross Notes, a scientific journal for the medical profession, and Red Cross Messenger, a journal for retail pharmacists, which explained the philosophy behind Johnson & Johnson and the science behind its products, as well as featuring articles for pharmacists on how to increase their business. 

Over the course of his career at Johnson & Johnson, Fred Kilmer’s work went so far as to improve upon the sterilization methods of trailblazers like physicians Joseph Lister (who discovered antiseptic surgery) and Robert Koch (who pioneered microbiology and steam sterilization). Kilmer was also an early advocate for women in science, hiring the company’s first woman scientist, a chemist, in 1907 and promoting pharmacy as a career for women.  Over his nearly five-decade career at the company, Kilmer forever changed Johnson & Johnson, solidifying its dedication to education, as well as product innovation, and expanding its reach beyond surgery to the burgeoning field of public health. A student of history in his spare time, Kilmer also founded the company’s archives and museum and began Johnson & Johnson’s tradition of preserving its heritage of innovation and caring.

From its very beginning, Johnson & Johnson was a champion of oral care. Zonweiss (“white teeth” in German) Tooth Cream was the company’s original consumer product in 1886. Just a decade later, the first mass-produced dental floss was added to the Johnson & Johnson price list. Though these were consumer goods, they—like Johnson & Johnson medical supplies—were shaped by Joseph Lister’s sterile surgical methods. Both were antiseptic, designed with hygiene in mind, and equipped with instructions to forward the health and knowledge of their buyers.

Earlier tooth cleaners were made from powder and required the user to dip the brush into the container and then place it under water to activate.

Image courtesy: Johnson & Johnson Archives

Seven years before Johnson & Johnson was founded in 1886, St. Louis doctor Joseph Lawrence formulated an antiseptic liquid he called “LISTERINE^®.” Named for Joseph Lister, the product was marketed as a safe alternative to carbolic acid as a surgical disinfectant (used by Lister to keep operations sterile), since carbolic acid could prove lethal in large doses. Originally, LISTERINE^® was marketed to treat a variety of ailments: dandruff, body odor, itchy insect bites, and cuts. It was not until 1895 that it was first sold to dentists.

LISTERINE® was sold in glass bottles until 1994.

Image courtesy: Johnson & Johnson Archives

LISTERINE^®, as well as Johnson & Johnson’s Zonweiss toothpaste and floss hit the market at a time when few Americans regularly cleaned their teeth. Elaborate toothpicks, carved from ivory or stone were the dental tool of choice among elites. But, most Americans relied on abrasive substances like coarse salt and even gunpowder to remove plaque, if they cleaned their teeth at all. With such limited oral care came big problems. Decay and tooth extractions were common and, when these troubles hit, few turned to professional dentists. Of the country’s limited dental force, only 15 percent had graduated from a formal dental school by 1870. Many Americans called upon blacksmiths and barbers to pull teeth. These procedures weren’t performed in sterile environments, making infections common.

In 1890, doctors outnumbered dentists six to one. Few dentists had professional clinics, some operated out of their own homes.

Image courtesy: Library of Congress

Johnson & Johnson worked to change Americans’ dental habits through the same innovative spirit it applied to its medical supplies. Unlike earlier tooth cleaning products, Zonweiss Toothpaste was a cream, not a powder, for easier application. It was originally sold in a glass jar with a tiny, cellulose spoon to allow direct application to the brush and to avoid the unsanitary practice of double-dipping. In 1889, Zonweiss’ packaging was reconceived as a squeezable tube, which further reduced the spread of germs. Within a decade, the company’s dental floss also hit the market. Floss was born directly from a surgical product: sterile, silk sutures. The suture manufacturing process produced economies of scale, allowing floss to be sold for less. In 1914, a spool of Johnson & Johnson floss cost merely 10 cents, just a fraction of a worker’s hourly wage.

Early advertisements doubled as instructions, showing potential consumers how to use the pioneering product.

Image courtesy: Johnson & Johnson Archives

By the turn of the 20th century, a new culture of health was unfolding. As sterile surgery became common practice, and understanding of hygiene spread, Americans became voracious consumers of health products and information. First aid guides thrived, allowing readers to better care for their bodies and their teeth. As a result, societal standards began to change. Oral health and hygiene—fresh breath and sparkly, white teeth—slowly became the expectation. This new normal required improved habits and new products to match: toothpaste, dental floss, and mouthwash. By the 1910s, LISTERINE^®’s odor-fighting powers were brought to the forefront. The product was rebranded as a mouthwash and deodorant.

The promotional Zonweiss clock centered around a detailed illustration of a figure demonstrating how to use the toothpaste. The product, itself, was quite literally front and center.

Image courtesy: Johnson & Johnson Archives

Advertising was instrumental in pushing this cultural shift forward. Early campaigns for Zonweiss dating from the 1880s focused on the product, itself. Original ads incorporated the toothpaste into poems and classic stories, yet it remained unpopular. Johnson & Johnson responded by manufacturing its first promotional product, distributing intricate Zonweiss clocks to pharmacists who sold the paste. In the early 20th century, ads for JOHNSON’S Toothpaste included testimonials and emphasized the science of oral care, with one 1922 ad proclaiming “Let science cleanse your teeth.”  Yet even these inventive strategies couldn’t convince Americans to buy toothpaste. So advertisers changed the game by transferring their focus to consumers, themselves. Campaigns played on Americans’—in particular, women’s—new fears of bad breath, less than white teeth and the social isolation they could cause. 

Despite these concerted efforts, product sales remained relatively low until the end of World War II, when most Americans began brushing their teeth every day. The conflict brought many young men under a regimented military routine, and within it was regular tooth brushing. Soldiers then took these habits home. Moreover, amidst the war, a shortage of silk for parachutes forced manufacturers like Johnson & Johnson to start producing floss from nylon, pushing its price down even further. In the 1950s, as consumer goods reached new heights, toothbrushes, including TEK toothbrushes from Johnson & Johnson, became popular.

Later advertisements, like this one from LISTERINE®, don’t even feature the product, it simply emphasized the social shame associated with not using it.

Image courtesy: Johnson & Johnson Archives

Johnson & Johnson’s early oral care products were ahead of their time and contributed to the emerging culture of health. Through pioneering, affordable supplies and accompanying instructions, the company taught Americans how to better care for their teeth. In 2006, LISTERINE^® has joined the company and is among its most recognized brands. Today, more than a century after the Zonweiss tooth cream hit the market, 70 percent of Americans brush their pearly whites twice daily.

A pair of clumsy newlyweds invented the Johnson & Johnson’s adhesive bandage. Their ready-made first aid supply became one of the company’s most iconic products.

The first BAND-AID^® Brand Adhesive Bandage hit the market in 1921. Johnson & Johnson cotton buyer Earle E. Dickson, came up with the idea for his young wife, Josephine, who was plagued by minor cuts and burns in her daily cooking. In 1920, he fashioned surgical tape and gauze into makeshift bandages, tenderly wrapping her wounds. But the process was cumbersome, and Dickson longed for a ready-made bandage Josephine could administer herself. From this need, the BAND-AID^® Brand Adhesive Bandage was born. Dickson took his idea to management, and Johnson & Johnson began manufacturing his design: an 18-by-2½-inch strip of sterile surgical tape with a strip of padded gauze lengthwise down the middle.

Earle Dickson, c. 1920.

Image courtesy: Johnson & Johnson Archives

Dickson’s ready-made bandage was a combination of two existing Johnson & Johnson products, surgical tape and gauze, with a removable sheet of crinoline (the same material used for petticoats) to protect its adhesive surface. Its introduction added to the company’s growing array of consumer products. Since its founding in 1886, Johnson & Johnson had made goods for consumers in addition to manufacturing sterile surgical supplies for hospitals. When World War I broke out in 1914, much of the company’s focus turned to military production, which only increased further once the United States entered the conflict in 1917. To keep up with wartime demand for bandages and dressings, the company expanded and acquired new cotton mills, revolutionizing its factories to speed up production. After the war ended in 1918, companies including Johnson & Johnson maintained their heightened output and searched for new markets for their goods—shifting their focus away from the military and hospitals towards civilian consumers. Because production was fast and mechanized, prices remained relatively low, allowing for mass consumption of an abundance of new goods.

Cotton mill employees stand in front of bandages and dressings produced to help injured soldiers, 1915.

Image courtesy: Johnson & Johnson Archives

For the first time in history, many Americans could afford these new products. The increase in the standard of living across the country went hand-in-hand with higher wages and the beginning of disposable income, creating space in the average budget for innovations in first aid, including the BAND-AID^® Brand Adhesive Bandage. Literacy rates also climbed. More Americans were reading newspapers and journals, which were filled with advertisements for the latest products. So, consumers began hearing about the new goods in their daily lives.

During the 1920s, modern advertising made its debut. Ad agencies had learned from their successful enlistment campaigns of World War I. Through vibrant and evocative posters, they appealed to Americans’ patriotism and raised an effective call to arms. These advertising tactics were applied to the emerging civilian markets after the war. Women, and more specifically mothers, were the target for early BAND-AID^® Brand Adhesive Bandage sales. Just as they were called to help their sons “win the war,” women were now prompted to tend to their family’s first aid in the home.

American recruitment poster from World War I, 1917.

Image courtesy: R.H. Porteous, Library of Congress

The rise in quality of life also encouraged a new emphasis on hygiene and cleanliness. In terms of wound care, up until the 1920s, Americans had used whatever scraps of material or gauze that were lying around the house to wrap cuts. But, with the wide acceptance of Louis Pasteur’s germ theory, they were increasingly aware that non-sterile wound treatment caused infection. This led to simple yet revolutionary changes like washing wounds with soap and covering cuts with sterile dressings. During the era, first aid manuals proliferated. Johnson & Johnson published its own in 1901 in addition to other guides teaching readers how to care for their bodies. One 1916 manual emphasized, “a stock of bandages and cloths for emergencies should be kept always on hand in every home,” illustrating a cultural push towards standardized first aid in the American home.

From this world, the BAND-AID® Brand Adhesive Bandage was born. Within the first year, it was not a hit—only $3,000 worth were sold (about $40,000 today). The product was initially made by hand and, because it was so novel, demonstrations were required to show customers its use. True to Dickson’s original design, it was sold in sheets, requiring each strip to be cut by a consumer.

BAND-AID® Brand Adhesive Bandage advertisement, 1923.

Image courtesy: Johnson & Johnson Archives

After several years of low sales, Johnson & Johnson went back to the drawing board. In 1924, it reengineered the product and released machine-made, pre-cut bandages in various sizes. Two years later, the company updated the product’s packaging, selling the first of its iconic metal tins in 1926. With the success of the product, the life of its creator was forever changed. During Earle Dickson’s long career at Johnson & Johnson, he was named a vice president and elected to the company’s board of directors. Today, nearly a century later, over 100 billion BAND-AID® Brand Adhesive Bandages have been made, and the iconic product has been at the heart of home first aid for generations. 

A collection of early BAND-AID® Brand Adhesive Bandages.

Image courtesy: Johnson & Johnson Archives