History of Lipstick: Uses of Penicillin
In the archives of the Science Museum in London, there is a lipstick. The design, the brand and the shade are nothing to remark about. It’s just a lipstick: made by Estée Lauder sometime in the 1950s.
But the intriguing catalogue entry demanded further investigation. “Sample of Estée Lauder lipstick which may have contained penicillin.”
The caveat ‘may’ will be addressed later but let us back up a bit to focus on the unusual lipstick ingredient: penicillin.
Alexander Fleming and the discovery of Penicillin
Penicillin heralded the dawn of the antibiotic age. Before its introduction, there was no effective treatment for infections such as pneumonia, gonorrhoea or rheumatic fever. Blood poisoning could develop from a simple cut or a scratch, and there was little that could be done but wait and hope.
Antibiotics are compounds produced by bacteria and fungi which are capable of killing, or inhibiting, competing microbial species. The phenomenon has long been known, and it may explain why the ancient Egyptians had the practice of applying a poultice of mouldy bread to infected wounds. But it was not until 1928 that penicillin, the first true antibiotic, was discovered by Alexander Fleming, Professor of Bacteriology at St. Mary’s Hospital in London.
The uses of Penicillin
By the 1940s penicillin had been trialled and small quantities of it were being made available to the public. The combination of excitement around the potential uses of penicillin and it being in short supply meant a sort of mania developed around it.
And surprisingly, one of these potential uses of penicillin was how it could be put to use to improve appearances.
For a correspondent at the newspaper, Smiths Weekly, this meant speculation on how it could be used to stimulate new hair growth and to restore grey hair to its original colour. Others suggested that face powders and lipsticks would restore youthful complexions and could potentially make wrinkles disappear.
Even Sir Alexander Fleming speculated that one of penicillin’s uses would be by the beauty industry which, by the 1940s, had grown into something nearing the all-encompassing body we are familiar with today. Fleming first floated this idea at the Royal Institute of Public Health in 1944 and repeated it several times throughout the following few years.
That these potential benefits were ripe for exploiting for profit was a point not lost on Fleming who said to a friend “if it does turn grey hair black, you had better take shares in a penicillin company.”
Fleming made it clear that it wasn’t something he intended to get involved in, but he was certain that some “enterprising pharmacist” would eventually do it.
Why Penicillin lipstick?
It’s fascinating to look at medical advancements through ideas of beauty, but it seems curious that the idea of penicillin lipstick and hair tonics dominated discussions around such an important medical advancement. It seems even more curious that these discussions were being made not by beauty companies directly but by the medical and scientific establishment.
But the attention on beauty products was actually part of a movement to offer non-painful solutions to administer penicillin. Penicillin would be usually be injected and, because it was still in an experimental phase, there were often painful side effects, as the body reacted to it.
Lipsticks, hair tonics and face powders were merely some of the potential suggestions for delivering penicillin. Others included lozenges and pastilles, shaving cream, toothpaste, and snuff. At the US Naval Training Centre in San Diego, physicians even experimented with ice cream laced with penicillin.
The Germless Kiss
Although germ theory has a history dating back to the Hippocratic Corpus, it was only in the 1870s and 1880s that investigators such as Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch delivered the proof that linked specific microorganisms to specific diseases. As part of a wider interest with both private and public hygiene, kissing came under scrutiny as a potential transmitter of dangerous germs.
Advertisers and companies also began to focus on developing products that would protect their customers from germs. A worry that, by the 1910s, had developed into a panic.
Although a new generation of scientific researchers soon began to debunk some of the theories of deadly household germs that could be killed by antiseptic wall paint, household cleaners and toothpaste the concern about kissing was much harder to kill. The pure and germless kiss remained, for some, an achievable dream although the ways that this could be achieved varied. For an unnamed company in 1920, this could be attained by using a screen placed between a couple’s lips. Looking rather like a small ping-pong racket the netting of the screen was covered with an antiseptic that was guaranteed to kill any germs and, by the look of the photograph accompanying the article, would also kill any passion at the same time.
Lipsticks impregnated with penicillin was definitely a better option.
In the UK, at least, by 1947 any hopes of developing a penicillin lipstick (or any of the other mooted products) were finished as Aneurin Bevan, then Minister of Health introduced The Penicillin Bill which empowered the Ministry of Health to control the sale and distribution of penicillin restricting it to prescription only. With that, it was hoped to stop penicillin from becoming “the plaything of quacks.”
Whether or not the lipstick in the collection at the Science Museum actually contained penicillin is unknown. But it really doesn’t seem that penicillin was utilised by the beauty industry at least in any meaningful way.