A brief history of vaginal douching, and why women used disinfectants as a contraceptive

Disinfectant brands were aggressively marketed to women as contraceptive douching agents in the 1920s and beyond

According to a market research report published by Technavio, the ‘vaginal odour’ business is expected to increase by five per cent every year for the next five years, which will translate to an annual incremental growth of $1,000,000 [£764,000].

Business may be booming, but it stinks. Have you ever wondered why the vulva requires a multi-billion-dollar industry and a range of specialist cleaning equipment to stay match fit when the penis can make do with a swill in the sink? Supermarkets do not stock peen clean, bollock balm, or scrotal soap, and yet ‘feminine hygiene’ products can fill an aisle.

Panty pads, special soaps, cleansing wipes, and ‘down there’ deodorants are all marketed as essential weaponry in the ongoing battle to make your minky-moo smell like an alpine meadow. But none of this is necessary because the vulva is entirely self-cleaning. It does not require chemical treatment or a bio-containment team in order to be healthy or for you to be able to safely leave the house. So why don’t we trust that our bodies know what they are doing?

Dr Jennifer Gunter, gynaecologist and author of ‘The Vagina Bible’, campaigns tirelessly to dismantle myths around vulval health. When she’s not shining a light on jade love eggs, she’s calling out the quacks who believe the vagina needs steam cleaning. “The myth of the dirty vagina or rogue uterus has been around since the time of Hippocrates,” she explains. “Medicine knows the vagina does not need cleaning or steaming, but patriarchal tropes are effective. As is scaring women about their normal, healthy vulvas and vaginas.” Sadly, there is a lot of money to be made by convincing women they stink, and the ‘vaginal odour business’ has a very long history indeed.

Vaginal douching

Vaginal douche, early 19th century (Wellcome Collection)

Vaginal deodorants, soaps, and wipes are actually quite late arrivals at this paranoia party. The oldest method of disinfecting your daisy is douching. A douche is a device that squirts water into the vaginal cavity – or the anal cavity, if you’re so inclined. At its most basic, a showerhead can be used as a douche, but more elaborate contraptions are still readily available online and come equipped with baking soda and alum to add to the water. Despite research linking vaginal douching to ovarian and cervical cancer, pelvic inflammatory disease, ectopic pregnancy, bacterial vaginosis, fertility problems and thrush, as many as one in five women in the US still regularly douche for ‘hygiene’ reasons.

Evidence of douching dates back to the ancient world, but it really came into its own in the nineteenth century when doctors started to prescribe it as a reliable method of birth control. But, douching has never just been about preventing pregnancy (it doesn’t, by the way). It’s always been about scrubbing away the metaphorical dirt that stigmatises female sexuality.

‘Knowlton recommended women douche after sex with a ‘sulphate of zinc, of alum, pearls, or any salt that acts chemically on the semen’

In 1832, American physician Charles Knowlton published his 64-page book, ‘Fruits of Philosophy, or, the Private Companion to Young Married People’. The book may have been brief, but it was ground-breaking nonetheless. Not only did it state sexual desire was not sinful, but it offered advice on contraception – specifically spermicidal douches.

Knowlton recommended women douche after sex with a ‘sulphate of zinc, of alum, pearls, or any salt that acts chemically on the semen’. He may have been one of the first physicians to recommend douches as birth control, but doctors had been swilling out their patients for ‘hygiene’ purposes long before Knowlton started pickling pussies in alum.

Figure 4 1950s Zonite douching advert (Flickr)

In 1829, The Lancet recommended women douche “six or eight times in the course of the day” by syringing in tepid water to keep everything in tip-top condition. In 1836, The Lancet reported six physicians had opened douching clinics the thermal spa town of Aix-les-Bains in France to cater to hordes of patients who flocked there to gargle the sulphuric waters with their chuffs.

In 1880, Dr Lyman announced “a woman should have a clean vagina as well as clean face and hands” and recommended regular “vaginal injections” of hot water and carbolic acid. And by 1893, The New England Journal of Medicine claimed doctors should inspect women who have just given birth for “foul” smells, and should they find any then it is “necessary to disinfect the vagina, which is best done by thorough vaginal douching with a corrosive sublimate solution”. In 1898 the ‘Monthly Retrospect of Medicine & Pharmacy’ lists the following ‘fluids to be used for vaginal douching’: alum, acetate of lead, chloride, boracic acid, carbolic acid, iodine, mercury, zinc, and Lysol disinfectant.

By focusing on the issue of ‘feminine hygiene’ within marriage, Lysol could raise the subject of sex and intimacy without ever having to use the word ‘sex’

Lysol brand disinfectant was introduced in 1889 to control a severe cholera epidemic in Germany. But, its antiseptic qualities were soon put to other uses, and by the 1920s Lysol was marketed as a contraceptive douching agent. In 1930 Zonite, Lysol’s most significant competitor, launched their own disinfectant douche.

Birth control was a highly controversial issue in 1920s America and certainly not something that could be openly advertised. By focusing on the issue of ‘feminine hygiene’ within marriage, Lysol could raise the subject of sex and intimacy without ever having to use the word ‘sex’.

Disinfectant douche adverts usually feature a young wife whose husband is on the verge of walking out because she has neglected her ‘feminine hygiene’. Distraught and humiliated women are shown abandoned and tearful because her husband couldn’t stand the smell of her. Homes lie in ruins, children are left fatherless and the poor woman will now die alone, and all because she forgot to baste her bits in cresols. It was an unbelievably cruel campaign.

Figure 3 Lysol douching advert (wikicommons)

Not only does douching with floor cleaner not prevent pregnancy, but it is also incredibly dangerous. By 1911 doctors had recorded eleven women who had been poisoned with Lysol douches, and five deaths from ‘uterine irrigation’.

Although doctors were well aware of how dangerous it was to marinade your moo in concentrated disinfectant, they could do little to counteract the advertising juggernaut that repeatedly suggested to women that unless they douched regularly, they would fall pregnant or smell so bad that seagulls would follow them down the street. In 1936, The Journal of American Medical Association reported the case of a 19-year-old married woman who douched several times a day with mercury chloride as a contraceptive. Not only had this resulted in severe vaginal and cervical burns, but when she finally went to the doctor to have this treated, she learned she was pregnant as well.

‘But contraceptive douching had created a market, and advertisers doubled their efforts to convince women they smell and that only their products could cure this’

It’s worth pointing out here that today, Lysol is owned by Reckitt Benckiser who had nothing to do with the original campaign, and whose team are just lovely to random women who email them out of the blue to ask about putting Lysol in genitals. For the record, the Lysol product from 110 years ago is not the Lysol product people see on shelves today, and they did ask that I make sure everyone reading this article fully understood that “today’s Lysol product should only be used as per label instruction. Any other form of use or exposure is to be avoided”.

Contraceptive douching had created a market

Eventually, contraceptive douching was replaced by the pill and latex condoms (things that actually work), and disinfectants went back to cleaning bins. But contraceptive douching had created a market, and advertisers doubled their efforts to convince women they smell and that only their products could cure this.

In the 1940s and 1950s, suddenly douching alone wasn’t enough to make sure your flue smells like a hospital ward and a host of new products flooded the market. Women’s magazines began carrying adverts for vaginal suppositories, powders, soaps, and wipes, and in 1966 the first aerosolised vaginal deodorant spray was introduced by the Alberto-Culver Corporation.

Today, the advertising for ‘feminine hygiene’ products is rather subtler and suggests your vulva needs special soap because regular soap will upset it. But, make no mistake, the ‘vaginal odour business’ relies as much on making women paranoid about their privates as the Lysol douche adverts of the early twentieth century did.

The human body is full of crevices that can get a bit whiffy from time to time, but it’s nothing regular bathing can’t deal with. The vulva is entirely self-cleaning. It does not require jets of perfumed water, specialist soaps, or scouring pads to be clean. It is not a dirty place.