A lot of birth control products were marketed as "women's hygeine" products back then because birth control was illegal. They were at best ineffective but harmless and at worst ineffective and dangerous.
Edited to add: another common item during that era were tinctures and tonics for "women's hygiene" to treat "irregularities." They were ostensibly for treating an *irregular* menstrual cycle or other vague *menstrual troubles*. Publicly discussing any menstrual problem was exceptionally taboo so you really have to read between the lines here. They were made of herbs and plants like Pennyroyal and caused miscarriages.
“Sit and drink pennyroyal tea
Distill the life that’s inside of me”
Holy shit I didn’t put those together.
Edit - yeah I didn’t get the lyric right. Sorry.
I wonder how common that knowledge was, or if there were women out there trying to get pregnant and having no idea that their regular Lysol baths were self-sabotaging
It was common knowledge. The products weren't marketed this way by accident. Women knew what to look and ask for; birth control methods have been around as long as people have.
It didn't work (and may have caused cancer - Lysol contained cresol at the time). But it was a brilliantly evil marketing campaign. They never said it in their official communication, but they implied it and never attempted to clarify.
Physicians commonly recommend a Lysol douche. Due to the information available at that time.
Women shared "recipes" to "prevent birth". Because we had to rely on each other. There were several, well-known, recipes to "prevent birth". Many shared on 3x5 cards, tucked into thousands of recipe boxes. Filed under "Miscellaneous". Because no one looked there. It was there if you, a friend, or loved one, needed one. Then that person saved it to share. Some recipes listed Lysol as a single ingredient. In a list of many ingredients.
It wasn't "evil marketing". The evil was not having access to safe healthcare.
They had to know. (I'm someone who remembers the passage of Roe v Wade.i was very young. ) I've heard stories from family members, including my grandmother, and great-grandmother. My grandmother was born in 1919. Nothing from my mother. I was an unplanned pregnancy.) I found some of the "recipes" in their recipe boxes, when they died. I've found others, in other recipe boxes in thrift stores.
They had, held onto, and shared information. Including who would terminate a pregnancy. If someone in the community would.
Some of it "worked". Some didn't. Often, multiple attempts were made.
I became curious, after hearing about the recipes, and other stories, from them. How, sometimes, one or more, women in the community would stay with the "patient". Household chores had to be completed, and meals made, in many cases. Sometimes, someone would provide childcare. Often, women endured on their own.
The person that I originally replied to mentioned " evil marketing" and the prospect of causing cancer. The truth is more desperate, and heinous. Women, and girls, were assaulted when trying to end a pregnancy. Women, and girls, were horriblly burned, and scared. Women, and girls, were left unable to bear children. Women died- Even with support from others.
See, abortion has been around forever. One of the founding fathers had recipes. In the Bible God tells men how to abort their wives' babies. Numbers five if you don't believe me. And the conservatives want to cut everyone off. You can bet their girlfriends are getting them.
Wow! That was akin to testing for a which by seeing if a woman floats!
The husband could have his wife suffer that trial if he was even feeling jealousy, and the burden of proof was, of course, on her. “The husband will be innocent of any wrongdoing, but the woman will bear the consequences of her sin.”
According to my mom as a 1950's teenager in the Southern United Statee, girls would shake up glass bottles of Coca Cola and douche with them in public restrooms after "parking" or sex at drive in movies. Apparently, it was thought the carbonation and pressure would clean out the sperm?
Less unpleasant than Lysol I guess, but it must have been so sticky.
Yeah, I’ve heard of it as a homemade spermicide before.
I’m glad most people have access to better options now. A good reminder of the saying “the good old days were terrible”
Not just used as a contraceptive either. It was also used as an abortifacient.
Just look up Lysol abortion. It's a hell of a rabbit hole. One a lot of forced birthers want to see come back.
my hands ache looking at that picture.. my mother used to make me scrub the kitchen and dining room floor on hands and knees, no gloves with lysol and water
My stepmom did too. The tub and the kitchen floor. I can still smell that stuff in my brain when I think about it. I had to use the old creamy murhys oil to shine the wood floors everywhere w a cotton cloth on my hands and knees once a month and then go over it again to buff it out
That’s how floors used to be cleaned for most people. It was a point of pride for families to have very clean homes and things like spin mops and gentle cleaners didn’t exist so lysol and scrubbing with a brush was how it got done. Waxing floors was part of it because modern floor coatings hadn’t been invented yet. Kids helped with all chores deemed appropriate for their age and gender, including scrubbing floors. I scrubbed floors too and while I’m old on Reddit I’m young compared to average age so we’re not talking 100 or even 50 years ago.
Haha gross!
I've actually used that before (NOT AS A DOUCHE LMAO) to disinfect my basement after it flooded with sewer water many many years ago (and the bottle was pretty old back then too). It smelled very medicinal.
Several years ago, the basement flooded again, and I was disappointed to find out they didn't sell it any more. I ended up using bleach.
My grandmother was from Green county Tennessee. During the Great Depression women would use Lysol as an abortifacient. It rarely works, and it could cause sepsis. Very dangerous.
In 1952 Lysol changed its formula and replaced the potentially carcinogenic cresol with ortho-hydroxydiphenyl. This made Lysol about one-fourth as toxic but “still potentially lethal if swallowed by a young child.”
That is so sad. Do the death certificates actually state the poison used or is that info learned from another source?
I've done genealogy research but I've never seen a death certificate for a poisoning, accidental or international.
I had a coworker who’s 13 year old daughter used the Lysol spray on her nether region thinking it would get things tidy and refreshed. The 4 hours in the ER with an inflamed vagina proved otherwise.
I remember hearing about that. It's said to have caused chemical burns "down there" in some women. But it wasn't uncommon for unregulated marketing departments to come up with stuff like that. I remember hearing Listerine was originally a floor cleaner that was later marketed as an, anti-septic, a dandruff remedy, and a mouthwash.
My grandfather used Listerine for dandruff. I remember him putting some in his hand and patting/ rubbing it into his balds head. This was in the 1970s.
Sadly, yes, it was a thing.
They shamed women into thinking their bodies were dirty and unsanitary, and believing that they needed to use MFing lysol to "fix" the "problem".
Removing foreskin with clean tools in a clean hospital, complete with aftercare and followup? Surrounded by actual doctors who know what they're doing... Versus being prescribed floor cleaner to shove up your vag at home by a "doctor" who's never even looked at a vagina before because they're too "dirty"?
I don't agree with the practice of foreskin removal either, but no. It's not the same thing.
The vintage ads for Lysol douches are really something. On the surface they're all about "personal daintiness" and how if you don't douche with Lysol your husband will be horrified with your stank down there. Which is \*fully bad enough\*.
But the underlying knowledge that douching with Lysol was considered to be a contraceptive (and, worse still, that some would try to get it up their cervix as an abortifacient) makes the ads read like a true horror show. Yes, Woman of the Past, you don't have safe and effective contraception available to you, but it's YOUR FAULT if your marital sex life isn't going great because of that fact and you'd damn well better keep your Lysol bottle handy.
[https://www.messynessychic.com/2020/05/19/how-she-kept-her-husband-with-lysol-the-disinfectant-of-choice-for-feminine-hygiene/](https://www.messynessychic.com/2020/05/19/how-she-kept-her-husband-with-lysol-the-disinfectant-of-choice-for-feminine-hygiene/)
Yeah it was actually written into the HBO show Boardwalk Empire which one of the female characters does. It’s not mentioned or a part of the story or script, just something she does in some random (post coital) moment that’s historically accurate.
"This is what you do. After you lie down with me, you go in there, wash your body with this poison, like any whore.”
He then smashes it after she says she won't be having any more children, the implication being that the Lysol is not *just* for "cleanliness."
So yeah, the word "Lysol" isn't said aloud (just printed on the label), but it's definitely part of the story.
I had a relative that used it as a douch back in the early 60s and said it burned horribly. It was her husband who told her he didn't think she should use it if it hurt. People trusted companies back then because they thought they truly had their customer's best interests in mind.
Google Lysol douche ads. They also advertised it as a remedy for women whose husbands were uninterested in intimacy with their wives due to “odors down there.” They pathologized normal genital scents and made women feel like it was their own poor hygiene that caused their partner to not want sex. No, it *couldn’t* be that hubby was having an affair or was a closet homosexual. It was only because she smelled bad. Ad execs were just making women feel insecure over normal body function so they could sell more Lysol. Who cares if it caused a miscarriage or gave vaginas chemical burns or messed up their delicate ph balance? Not the Mad Men! I’m sure many women had no idea it was an abortifacient and lost wanted babies due to being made to feel they weren’t’ well enough disinfected for sex.
Contraceptive and (believed possible) abortifacient. It would have been outrageous at the time to directly state those words on the label, and depending upon where this was sold, illegal.
Other contraceptive methods at the time were primarily available only to men (condoms) or married women with their husbands’ consent (diaphragm), or little-known (fertility awareness method) in the countries where this was sold.
If you are shocked by this, I have some bad news for you about women’s history.
I’m not sad that I don’t see commercials for “mom sometimes I just don’t feel fresh” while driving in the car when mom
Pulls out the masengil box because everyone keeps douche in their purse
I remember learning about that in college. If it wasn't diluted enough, it could cause chemical burns, since this is the phenolic version of Lysol (phenols are great disinfectant, but also used in some chemical peels). Microbiome what? I'm pretty sure it caused some issues if a woman douched with Lysol when they were pregnant also.
My grandmother always had this mixed with water in a separate brown glass spray bottle that also said Lysol on it. One day when I was about 5 years old, I tried to pet her neighbor’s cat and it gave me bloody scratches down my entire inner forearm. My grandmother wanted to disinfect it, so she sprayed what was in the bottle into the cuts. That moment instantly became a long term memory that I still have today.
I knew that Lysol was marketed as a douche, but I didn't know that they recommended diluting it first, so this is... oddly comforting to know, given the _absolute horrors_ I had been imagining all these years.
yea maybe, but in the 90s I worked a home for schizophrenic women and some lady in her 70s went to the hospital because she douched with Lysol... except it was Lysol concentrate. Dont think she was pregnant but she may have thought she was.
# 1937 Took a fatal amount of Lysol within 24 hours of giving birth to her 3rd child
[https://www.reddit.com/r/DeathCertificates/comments/1doap31/took\_a\_fatal\_amount\_of\_lysol\_within\_24\_hours\_of/](https://www.reddit.com/r/DeathCertificates/comments/1doap31/took_a_fatal_amount_of_lysol_within_24_hours_of/)
#
It was used post sex as an ineffective and presumably deeply unpleasant contraception, 'back in the day'
A lot of birth control products were marketed as "women's hygeine" products back then because birth control was illegal. They were at best ineffective but harmless and at worst ineffective and dangerous. Edited to add: another common item during that era were tinctures and tonics for "women's hygiene" to treat "irregularities." They were ostensibly for treating an *irregular* menstrual cycle or other vague *menstrual troubles*. Publicly discussing any menstrual problem was exceptionally taboo so you really have to read between the lines here. They were made of herbs and plants like Pennyroyal and caused miscarriages.
Things were also described as being for "restoring menses" if they were abortifacient.
“Sit and drink pennyroyal tea Distill the life that’s inside of me” Holy shit I didn’t put those together. Edit - yeah I didn’t get the lyric right. Sorry.
But that’s not the lyric. It’s ‘distill the life that’s inside of me’
I thought it was “to still the life that’s inside of me” because that would make more sense… I’m disappointed to learn you’re right
Could also be a bit of a play on words.
Oh shit you’re right.
Wow me neither (and, probably a bunch of seemingly nonsense Nirvava lyrics will continue to go right over my head despite actually having meaning)
I didn’t get the lyric right though.
Hey they weren't called Nirvava either lol
From "In Utero"
I wonder how common that knowledge was, or if there were women out there trying to get pregnant and having no idea that their regular Lysol baths were self-sabotaging
It was common knowledge. The products weren't marketed this way by accident. Women knew what to look and ask for; birth control methods have been around as long as people have.
It didn't work (and may have caused cancer - Lysol contained cresol at the time). But it was a brilliantly evil marketing campaign. They never said it in their official communication, but they implied it and never attempted to clarify.
Physicians commonly recommend a Lysol douche. Due to the information available at that time. Women shared "recipes" to "prevent birth". Because we had to rely on each other. There were several, well-known, recipes to "prevent birth". Many shared on 3x5 cards, tucked into thousands of recipe boxes. Filed under "Miscellaneous". Because no one looked there. It was there if you, a friend, or loved one, needed one. Then that person saved it to share. Some recipes listed Lysol as a single ingredient. In a list of many ingredients. It wasn't "evil marketing". The evil was not having access to safe healthcare.
Which sadly is happening again today.
You're right. I was trying to make that point, as well.
In what way, if I may ask?
Women not having access to safe healthcare.
I thought you meant specifically the use of Lysol, thank you for the reply
One lady told my mom she used turpentine around the belly button.
Thank you. The comment that said that women just knew what these things were for was kind of blowing my mind. This makes much more sense.
They had to know. (I'm someone who remembers the passage of Roe v Wade.i was very young. ) I've heard stories from family members, including my grandmother, and great-grandmother. My grandmother was born in 1919. Nothing from my mother. I was an unplanned pregnancy.) I found some of the "recipes" in their recipe boxes, when they died. I've found others, in other recipe boxes in thrift stores. They had, held onto, and shared information. Including who would terminate a pregnancy. If someone in the community would. Some of it "worked". Some didn't. Often, multiple attempts were made. I became curious, after hearing about the recipes, and other stories, from them. How, sometimes, one or more, women in the community would stay with the "patient". Household chores had to be completed, and meals made, in many cases. Sometimes, someone would provide childcare. Often, women endured on their own. The person that I originally replied to mentioned " evil marketing" and the prospect of causing cancer. The truth is more desperate, and heinous. Women, and girls, were assaulted when trying to end a pregnancy. Women, and girls, were horriblly burned, and scared. Women, and girls, were left unable to bear children. Women died- Even with support from others.
The "information" was available from Lysol marketing (albeit not self-identified as such). This was very much intentional and engineered.
You can pick whatever hill you choose to defend. No one is going to stop you.
It's not evil. It's not evil. It's not evil.
See, abortion has been around forever. One of the founding fathers had recipes. In the Bible God tells men how to abort their wives' babies. Numbers five if you don't believe me. And the conservatives want to cut everyone off. You can bet their girlfriends are getting them.
Wow! That was akin to testing for a which by seeing if a woman floats! The husband could have his wife suffer that trial if he was even feeling jealousy, and the burden of proof was, of course, on her. “The husband will be innocent of any wrongdoing, but the woman will bear the consequences of her sin.”
God did a whole lot of post-birth abortions, too. The flood and his son, are just a few.
Wow
Yikes.
According to my mom as a 1950's teenager in the Southern United Statee, girls would shake up glass bottles of Coca Cola and douche with them in public restrooms after "parking" or sex at drive in movies. Apparently, it was thought the carbonation and pressure would clean out the sperm? Less unpleasant than Lysol I guess, but it must have been so sticky.
Breeding ground for yeast infections with all that sugar
Honestly the acidity probably did a little something . I guess sperm motility is low below pH 6, and coke is under 3.
Yeah, I’ve heard of it as a homemade spermicide before. I’m glad most people have access to better options now. A good reminder of the saying “the good old days were terrible”
Here is an article on it. https://www.motherjones.com/media/2012/03/when-women-used-lysol-birth-control/
Not just used as a contraceptive either. It was also used as an abortifacient. Just look up Lysol abortion. It's a hell of a rabbit hole. One a lot of forced birthers want to see come back.
The old Plan B when the condom broke.
Or when their pullout game was weak.
I saw this in Boardwalk Empire!
Feel the burn
my hands ache looking at that picture.. my mother used to make me scrub the kitchen and dining room floor on hands and knees, no gloves with lysol and water
My stepmom did too. The tub and the kitchen floor. I can still smell that stuff in my brain when I think about it. I had to use the old creamy murhys oil to shine the wood floors everywhere w a cotton cloth on my hands and knees once a month and then go over it again to buff it out
I hope you know that was child abuse
That’s how floors used to be cleaned for most people. It was a point of pride for families to have very clean homes and things like spin mops and gentle cleaners didn’t exist so lysol and scrubbing with a brush was how it got done. Waxing floors was part of it because modern floor coatings hadn’t been invented yet. Kids helped with all chores deemed appropriate for their age and gender, including scrubbing floors. I scrubbed floors too and while I’m old on Reddit I’m young compared to average age so we’re not talking 100 or even 50 years ago.
Did they not have gloves back then?? I mean 😭
Haha gross! I've actually used that before (NOT AS A DOUCHE LMAO) to disinfect my basement after it flooded with sewer water many many years ago (and the bottle was pretty old back then too). It smelled very medicinal. Several years ago, the basement flooded again, and I was disappointed to find out they didn't sell it any more. I ended up using bleach.
They do still sell Lysol concentrate! It's hard to find in stores but it exists.
Thanks! I'll keep my eyes open for it!
Check Walmart.
Holy crap, I hope you had a mask
My grandmother was from Green county Tennessee. During the Great Depression women would use Lysol as an abortifacient. It rarely works, and it could cause sepsis. Very dangerous.
I wonder if it was known as a gamble even back then but desperation took precedent.
Can you imagine the desperation of an unwanted pregnancy during the great depression? Holy shit!
That makes me a wee bit nauseous just to think about.
Hello, fellow hillbilly descendant! Momo (b. 1900s) was from Wayne County and also was intimately acquainted with Lysol's varied uses.
No, that can't be. That's conservative country.
it definitely can be, was and still is a thing that happens in "conservative country"
Life ends at disinfection.
This concentrate has a particular smell. Like a dental office. It’s medicinal smelling.
In 1952 Lysol changed its formula and replaced the potentially carcinogenic cresol with ortho-hydroxydiphenyl. This made Lysol about one-fourth as toxic but “still potentially lethal if swallowed by a young child.”
The newer smell always reminded me of Band-aids.
Exactly! Bandaids.
I've read a lot of death certificates of women using Lysol as a suicide aid. It's so very sad. One lady drank it a day after giving birth.
That is so sad. Do the death certificates actually state the poison used or is that info learned from another source? I've done genealogy research but I've never seen a death certificate for a poisoning, accidental or international.
There's a sub here called Death certificates and some of the older ones do.
I'm having trouble linking it but it's on the sub Death certificates. Just search Lysol in the search bar.
I had a coworker who’s 13 year old daughter used the Lysol spray on her nether region thinking it would get things tidy and refreshed. The 4 hours in the ER with an inflamed vagina proved otherwise.
r/kidsarefuckingstupid
Parents who don’t teach kids about hygiene and reproductive health are fucking stupid
My grandma used to take a weekly Lysol bath.
Hwhat now?
After Sunday bukake
An extremely rare sighting in the wild of the term "douche bag" where it is not an insult!
Digging into the history of women's healthcare in America is truly shocking. This is just a tiny taste 😖
Not just in the USA either. Women's health historically was just horrid. The past was the fekkin worst, in so many ways.
"The good old days"
It definitely is. I made the mistake of looking up the history of the chainsaw. 😳
Why did you do that to me.
Sorry. I did say that I’d made that mistake. 🤷🏼♀️
There’s a late night rabbit hole nightmare! The history of the douche.
Unfortunately it’s still pretty awful tho, for a lot of reasons.
My labia majora slammed shut after reading this.
My minora slammed soon after
Our vagina's "fight-or-flight-or-batten down the hatches" ain't messin' around.
I remember hearing about that. It's said to have caused chemical burns "down there" in some women. But it wasn't uncommon for unregulated marketing departments to come up with stuff like that. I remember hearing Listerine was originally a floor cleaner that was later marketed as an, anti-septic, a dandruff remedy, and a mouthwash.
Emanuel Bronner laughs at your puny tri-purpose product and scales his font down a little more
ALL ONE OR NONE!
DILUTE! DILUTE! OKAY!
Listerine is used as a cleaning solution for removing cat pee smell and spray on countertop or outdoor table to keep flies away
Really? I'll have to try that one. Do you mix it with water or use it straight? is it the regular pee-colored Blisterine?
My grandfather used Listerine for dandruff. I remember him putting some in his hand and patting/ rubbing it into his balds head. This was in the 1970s.
There is a scene in Boardwalk Empire highlighting this purpose that sent me down a Lysol rabbit hole many years ago.
I’m torn between screaming and crossing my legs really tightly. Guess I’ll just do both.
So you’re saying my great grandmother was using Lysol as a douche, and im out here not touching receipts because of BPA/BPS
Use on: Linoleum, Porcelain, Stinky Pussy, Hardwood Floors & More
Hahahaha
Sadly, yes, it was a thing. They shamed women into thinking their bodies were dirty and unsanitary, and believing that they needed to use MFing lysol to "fix" the "problem".
Isn’t this how Trump proposed we cure Covid 😂
If you don't have the anatomy to douche, just boof it.
This was more along the lines of a “birth control” method hidden behind “hygiene”.
Well western hospitals have done the same thing to this day with males having foreskin.
Removing foreskin with clean tools in a clean hospital, complete with aftercare and followup? Surrounded by actual doctors who know what they're doing... Versus being prescribed floor cleaner to shove up your vag at home by a "doctor" who's never even looked at a vagina before because they're too "dirty"? I don't agree with the practice of foreskin removal either, but no. It's not the same thing.
It was an analogy how western medicine sees foreskin as dirty. You really didn't get it. r/woosh
It seems unnecessary to insert a penis into a conversation about women’s health.
On the bright side, now they don’t have to Lysol behind all that skin, eh?
The vintage ads for Lysol douches are really something. On the surface they're all about "personal daintiness" and how if you don't douche with Lysol your husband will be horrified with your stank down there. Which is \*fully bad enough\*. But the underlying knowledge that douching with Lysol was considered to be a contraceptive (and, worse still, that some would try to get it up their cervix as an abortifacient) makes the ads read like a true horror show. Yes, Woman of the Past, you don't have safe and effective contraception available to you, but it's YOUR FAULT if your marital sex life isn't going great because of that fact and you'd damn well better keep your Lysol bottle handy. [https://www.messynessychic.com/2020/05/19/how-she-kept-her-husband-with-lysol-the-disinfectant-of-choice-for-feminine-hygiene/](https://www.messynessychic.com/2020/05/19/how-she-kept-her-husband-with-lysol-the-disinfectant-of-choice-for-feminine-hygiene/)
I mean life before the pill..
I laughed out loud at “personal daintiness.” [fans away flies down there]
Yeah it was actually written into the HBO show Boardwalk Empire which one of the female characters does. It’s not mentioned or a part of the story or script, just something she does in some random (post coital) moment that’s historically accurate.
"This is what you do. After you lie down with me, you go in there, wash your body with this poison, like any whore.” He then smashes it after she says she won't be having any more children, the implication being that the Lysol is not *just* for "cleanliness." So yeah, the word "Lysol" isn't said aloud (just printed on the label), but it's definitely part of the story.
I had a relative that used it as a douch back in the early 60s and said it burned horribly. It was her husband who told her he didn't think she should use it if it hurt. People trusted companies back then because they thought they truly had their customer's best interests in mind.
Back in the day magazines had full page ads on how douching with Lysol was really every wife’s responsibility if she wanted to keep a happy husband.
Or what you did if you had a horrible husband.. I feel like people don’t really talk about marital rape .. and how prevalent it was.
Oh good gosh.
"A little spray here, a little spray there, a little spray in my underwear!"
Google Lysol douche ads. They also advertised it as a remedy for women whose husbands were uninterested in intimacy with their wives due to “odors down there.” They pathologized normal genital scents and made women feel like it was their own poor hygiene that caused their partner to not want sex. No, it *couldn’t* be that hubby was having an affair or was a closet homosexual. It was only because she smelled bad. Ad execs were just making women feel insecure over normal body function so they could sell more Lysol. Who cares if it caused a miscarriage or gave vaginas chemical burns or messed up their delicate ph balance? Not the Mad Men! I’m sure many women had no idea it was an abortifacient and lost wanted babies due to being made to feel they weren’t’ well enough disinfected for sex.
I was hoping it was a recipe for making speed lol.
i have that feeling guys get when they see other guys getting kicked in the nads
Pikachu used **testicle retract**
The bottle of bluing is cool too
Contraceptive and (believed possible) abortifacient. It would have been outrageous at the time to directly state those words on the label, and depending upon where this was sold, illegal. Other contraceptive methods at the time were primarily available only to men (condoms) or married women with their husbands’ consent (diaphragm), or little-known (fertility awareness method) in the countries where this was sold. If you are shocked by this, I have some bad news for you about women’s history.
Yup Lysol was originally intended as a feminine hygiene product until women started getting seriously ill
“New Shimmer is a floor wax!” “No, New Shimmer is a desert topping!”
Am I the only one thinking "Lysol That Pussy(LTP)" could be a rap song?
Pouring Lysol into your local douche bag since 1930
Yep. It was actally used as a type of birth control 😳
Damn! The Good, The Bad, The Caustic
My Nanny used to douche with Borax…
There's still boric acid suppositories at Target.
I’m not sad that I don’t see commercials for “mom sometimes I just don’t feel fresh” while driving in the car when mom Pulls out the masengil box because everyone keeps douche in their purse
Got mine on a keychain, fam.
Yes Lysol used to be used as a douche. Clean your floors, clean your vag! I take it you never saw Boardwalk Empire.
My grandma was still using Lysol as a "personal cleanser" (as she called it) IN THE 90s!!
I remember learning about that in college. If it wasn't diluted enough, it could cause chemical burns, since this is the phenolic version of Lysol (phenols are great disinfectant, but also used in some chemical peels). Microbiome what? I'm pretty sure it caused some issues if a woman douched with Lysol when they were pregnant also.
Lysol douche truly cleans Grandma’s ‘pantry’.
That’s seems like a record-breaking yeast infection speed run.
My grandmother always had this mixed with water in a separate brown glass spray bottle that also said Lysol on it. One day when I was about 5 years old, I tried to pet her neighbor’s cat and it gave me bloody scratches down my entire inner forearm. My grandmother wanted to disinfect it, so she sprayed what was in the bottle into the cuts. That moment instantly became a long term memory that I still have today.
This stuff was stinky!!!
Listerine and I believe Lysol were also used for Douching.
Listerine was a surface disinfectant before they realized it's an effective mouthwash.
I can smell that now...I believe you can still buy this today I work in a grocery store...I will check out the shelves when I go to work later
It easily available at Walmart pre Covid.
I *knew* douchbags were a thing...
No matter how bad the political climate gets, please do not put Lysol up your lady bits.
HEY DO NOT DO THIS
I thought that was fairly common knowledge by now that they came before Summers Eve in that department
Omg!!!!!
Omg. That sounds horrible..ouchhhh
CAN YOU EVEN IMAGINE???! 😱😱😱
DEEP clean with Lysol!
Just love the old school terminology of, “douche”.
My mom had one of these left in the 90s. I was horrified. O I learned 2 young.
I knew that Lysol was marketed as a douche, but I didn't know that they recommended diluting it first, so this is... oddly comforting to know, given the _absolute horrors_ I had been imagining all these years.
RIP your pH balance for like the next decade, good LORD.
Omg was Trump right about injecting Lysol? /s
Code for contraception. Pretty wild but also, I’m keeping this in mind for when shit gets real around here.
yea maybe, but in the 90s I worked a home for schizophrenic women and some lady in her 70s went to the hospital because she douched with Lysol... except it was Lysol concentrate. Dont think she was pregnant but she may have thought she was.
The way everything crawled back inside me when I read that… 🥴
Granny was wild!
I knew that was coming, but I still smiled 😂
I worked for an older woman years ago who described this to me. She also cleaned around the outside with Listerine. Just for funsies, I guess.
# 1937 Took a fatal amount of Lysol within 24 hours of giving birth to her 3rd child [https://www.reddit.com/r/DeathCertificates/comments/1doap31/took\_a\_fatal\_amount\_of\_lysol\_within\_24\_hours\_of/](https://www.reddit.com/r/DeathCertificates/comments/1doap31/took_a_fatal_amount_of_lysol_within_24_hours_of/) #
Some women used to do this as a birth control method. DO NOT DO THIS!!!!
It was created and marketed first as a douche.
My vagina just retreated inside itself. 😨
I think I just made a diamond with how hard I clamped down at the thought. Ohmigosh. No. Eww.
Holy crap! My thighs just slammed shut involuntarily.
It was first launched as a feminine hygiene product. I can’t even imagine that. Ouch.
I don't even have a vagina and the thought of a Lysol douche makes my insides feel itchy and raw.
DEEP CLEAN
Can you imagine the SMELL??
Oh dear Jesus.
my stunned ass read “one tampon lysol to each quart” 😵💫
Yeah... I cannot even imagine douching with fecking LYSOL
Yeah I remember reading that when I was a kid. Fuck I'm old.
I knew it was going to be that!!!! I think I read it 20 years ago or so.
They still sell this. I use it on my floors, it has a really strong (hospital) smell, but I know it kills germs and pet odors.
That would definitely get you clean..
No thank you.
Yikes… a deep clean.
Douche baggery
Hmm, will that work for Covid? Sounds kind of trumpy.
Dettol 🇯🇲
Go to the store and buy regular Lysol and try to take that back .
Yup. My friend’s dad would use Lysol wipes like wet naps because he grew up in this era. Luckily he never used it internally lol
Diaper Pails and Douche: Mid-Century Mom
They are talking about your ex
You just know that lysol probably cleans way better than anything on the market these days
Yep! True!
Someone tell Cardi B.
She probably grew up using Lemisol.