The History of Hand Sanitizers
The history and mystery of Purell, the most sacred goo of our new era
Imagine having enough Purell to cover not just your hands but your entire body, right now. Imagine covering your entire family. Imagine covering the entire country. What about the entire world? Just SQUIRT and disinfect every surface at once? Imagine there were moments that could, in the middle of this chaos, feel completely safe and clean.
Purell. Not the only hand sanitizer out there, but the symbolic one. The brand name. The future museum artifact representing the spring of covid-19. A clear liquid in a clear bottle in a clear glass box that a cyborg mother points out to her cyborg child: “See this? They used to rub this on themselves. It supposedly killed 99.99 percent of germs, but it definitely made them feel 100 percent better.”
Did you know that the first mainstream commercial for Purell was run on the Elizabeth Taylor Birthday Special co-hosted with Micheal Jackson?
The real inventor of hand sanitizer wasn’t Gojo, according to people on Twitter and Reddit, or any other giant pharmaceutical firm. It was a young woman named Lupe Hernandez.
Hernandez, they said, was a nursing student from Bakersfield, Calif., who — all the way back in 1966 — got the idea that disinfecting alcohol could be combined with gel to create water-free and portable cleanliness. She patented it, allegedly, and changed the world, but never got any credit.
“It’s refreshing to see her get a bit of recognition, albeit late,” wrote the website Remezcla on Wednesday. “Over 50 years later, Lupe Hernandez is still saving lives against threatening diseases and protecting brave medical professionals.”
For the full article here is the link: https://www.washingtonpost.
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Scott Jarden