Comments on: Hasn’t your daughter a right to be told (Aug, 1930)

By: Tom

Tom — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 01:47:28 +0000

Boric acid is also billed as a very effective cockroach killer. You don’t want them up your frammazamma either, now do you?

By: John Savard

John Savard — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 22:46:19 +0000

Boric acid is good for more than killing ants. It is gentle enough that people used to use it as an antiseptic eyewash.

By: Richard

Richard — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 18:12:38 +0000

@StanFlouride, you missed your vocation – you should be an advertising copywriter…

By: StanFlouride

StanFlouride — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 03:46:12 +0000

“Ant Invasion- the untold side of feminine hygiene.”

By: Neil Russell

Neil Russell — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 02:33:08 +0000

You’d think the guys that wrote the copy would have extolled the ability of the stuff to keep out ants

By: Charlene

Charlene — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 19:41:48 +0000

I just looked this up. Zonite was double-strength Dakin’s solution. I was wrong about it being nothing but “diluted bleach”- Dakin’s contains boric acid too. Bleach and ant killer!

But according to my medical dictionary, Dakin’s has to be extremely fresh to be effective – after 24 hours it breaks down into “irritating” secondary compounds. Zonite, on the other hand, would have been sitting on druggists’ shelves for weeks or months before it was used.

So basically women were being sold a chemical compound that irritated the membranes but didn’t do much good otherwise. The irritation probably felt like tingling, sort of like those acne medicines teenagers buy that “make the skin tingle because it’s working”, but of course the tingling is actually the skin being irritated and becoming even more prone to acne.

This is more than I, and probably most of you, ever wanted to know.

By: jeffg

jeffg — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 18:50:13 +0000

gosh, i hope it was very diluted

By: Charlene

Charlene — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 18:45:51 +0000

“For God’s sake, don’t do something crazy like *talk to her*! Give her this sales pitch – er, “hygiene booklet” – instead!”

This is of course yet another cryptic yeast infection treatment ad, but in reality Zonite was more popular as a (relatively ineffectual) contraceptive than as a (just as ineffective) treatment for any supposed hygiene problem. The main ingredient: diluted household bleach.