History of Mouthwash

Contributor
By Shelley Moore, eHow Contributing Writer .

Ancient people discovered different ways of cleaning their teeth with various sorts of abrasives made into a powder. However, they soon learned that clean teeth didn't always clear up bad breath as well. Over the years, mouthwash has included some obvious ingredients, such as cinnamon, and more questionable ones, such as human urine. Mouthwash products have come a long way from ancient Rome.

History
The first evidence of breath freshener dates back to about 1000 B.C. with the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans chewing on eucalyptus, peppermint, cinnamon and vanilla beans. By 500 B.C., these people as well as the Chinese were chewing on powdered charcoal and bark to freshen breath. The Chinese and Romans later added mint leaves. The Greeks also used goat and donkey milk as mouthwash.

Geography
The Romans were clever enough to add hartshorn to their tooth powders because of its ammonia bleaching properties. They added human urine, which also had ammonia and was used in laundering. Realizing its powerful cleaning attributes, the Romans used it for a mouthwash too, preferring for some reason the urine of Portuguese people. Human urine became so valuable that the emperor Nero even placed a tax on it in the first century A.D. It wasn't only the Romans who used this sort of mouthwash--the Greeks did as well.

Significance
In the 1670s, the Dutch microscope inventor Anthony van Leeuwenhoek discovered bacteria. He called them little living animals or eels. Some of these "live animals" he found in deposits on teeth. He also discovered he could kill similar organisms from a nearby canal with brandy or vinegar, and thus learned the antiseptic properties of these fluids. Van Leeuvenhoek tried killing the "animals" in his mouth with strong wine-vinegar, finding that he could successfully eliminate the ones on the surface of the plaque, which he called "scurf," but that not all the animals were killed. This led him to conclude the vinegar did not penetrate the plaque very well. He also discovered that he could kill these bacteria with heat, after noticing that some bacteria died off after he swished coffee in his mouth. Although Van Leeuwenhoek did not have much success with mouthwash, his discoveries about bacteria and antiseptic products dramatically changed the fields of biology and medicine forever.

Time Frame
Different mouthwash formulas were experimented with over the years to make the substance less obnoxious while still killing bacteria. During the 1800s, for instance, a mouthwash might consist of ammonia mixed with honey and eucalyptus. Eventually ammonia was replaced with alcohol. The first antiseptic mouthwash to be marketed commercially was called Odol, invented by a German researcher in the late 1800s. Odol is still available today.

Prevention/Solution
English physician Joseph Lister performed the first surgery using antiseptic in the 1860s, sterilizing the instruments and the operating area with his carbolic acid bacteria-killing formula. These germ-killing methods helped prevent infections. About 10 years later, two other doctors introduced the antiseptic product we still know today, naming it Listerine after Dr. Lister. They marketed the liquid through their business, The Lambert Company, as a disinfectant for surgery. Around 1895, they also tried selling it as a mouthwash for its ability to kill germs, with little success except to dental practices. After World War I, the Lambert Company got the idea to heighten the public's concerns about bad breath. They advertised Listerine as a product that would eliminate this problem and subsequently made a fortune.


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