Trump’s disinfectant idea wasn’t the first time someone suggested using them internally (or: Lysol’s douchey ads)

There are a couple of things you should take away from Trump’s news conference yesterday, in which one of the suggestions he made

1. A news conference is not the time for spitballing. You can do that in closed meetings and brainstorming sessions, but doing it in a news conference undermines its purpose: to get one to three messages across.
2. This is only the most recent incident where someone has suggested to a nationwide audience that maybe disinfectants could be applied internally.

Case in point: Old ads for the Lysol. Today, we know it as a household cleaner, but when it first came out, it was marketed in different ways. In its earliest days, it was marketed as a way to help fight epidemics and pandemics — first in 1889, with the cholera outbreak in Germany, and then in 1918 for the flu pandemic of that era. But in the 1920s, it was billed as a feminine hygiene product — housewives were told to douche with good ol’ Lysol.

There’s also a connotation to the phrase “feminine hygiene” that a modern reader would miss — according to historian Andrea Tone, the term was also a euphemism for contraception, which isn’t surprising, given that the U.S. once had the repressive Comstock laws. She writes about it in her book Devices and Desires: A History of Contraceptives in America.

Here’s a selection of old Lysol ads. Read ’em, and give thanks Lysol isn’t marketed that way anymore.

Tap the ad to see it at full size.

Tap the ad to see it at full size.

Tap the ad to see it at full size.

Tap the ad to see it at full size.

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Tap the ad to see it at full size.

Tap the ad to see it at full size.

Tap the ad to see it at full size.