June Newsletter

The toasty days of summer bring more sweat with activities, indoors and out. Mixing with our bodies' bacteria, certain odors can't be avoided...unless you have NeutrOlene handy. Think about it. Instead of masking those odors, neutralize them, getting totally rid of them -- in your rolling stock, personal vehicles, closets, carpets, furniture upholstery, restrooms, toilets, you name it...so don't endure those unpleasant seasonal odors. Make NeutrOlene a daily habit!

Didjaknow? If you can't smell it, you can't taste it. Some say we "eat with our eyes," but actually, we eat with our noses.

NeutrOlene as a Father's Day Gift. Some high-end gift catalogs are introducing one of the best Father's Day gifts ever -- the StinkBOSS. As advertised, the combination of heat and ozone that gathers in the white plastic cabinet can take the stink out of anything. It's just a matter of time. This new appliance retails for $170 and is advertised to deodorize anything, including athletic shoes, shorts and shirts. Why not neutralize odors instead...and for this MSRP, you can order enough NeutrOlene for an entire year. Now who's the boss?

Our stinkin' history. Because Renaissance women believed bathing themselves weakened the body, they did not bathe regularly. As a matter of fact, “the middle and upper classes feared water, roughly from the Renaissance to the end of the 18th Century.  They bathed as little as peasants or the urban poor.” 

If they did decide to bathe, baths were a mixture of hot water, milk and herbs to soften the skin. It was not until later -- when baths were considered a daily activity -- and indoor bathrooms were built into homes. Before then, baths were taken in tin tubs placed in front of a fire in a sitting room. For cleansing products, soap was commonly used and affordable to all classes. 

Instead of a daily shower, Renaissance women used a plethora of perfume fragrances to cover their body from giving off a bad odorous smell. The fragrances were usually made of rhubarb elixir and molasses water. A lot of the Italian and French fragrances were conveniently imported with the help of Queen Elizabeth I. Not only did these ladies need their bodies smelling fresh and clean, they also used scented orris power from ground iris roots that were used to aromatize their clothes and household linen. 

Quick Trick. Need to freshen a restroom at your firm (or a bathroom in your home)? Take a paper towel, a paper napkin or a baby wipe, spray it liberally with NeutrOlene Spray. Then wad it up and throw it in a wastebasket. You'd be surprised how quickly this neutralizes cigarette and other bathroom odors.

Quick Trick, Too. With summer vacations underway, it's time to get out the summer stuff...if you haven't done it already. Smell wonky? Spray or wipe down with NeutrOlene -- whether it's a beach bag, gym bag, lunch bag, luggage...even a swimsuit that's been stored through the winter. It's amazing what a couple of quick sprays will do.

PS: Since NeutrOlene is effective on anything organic, we also use it on our RV and our trailer when we take it out of storage for the season. In the R V, I spray everything fabric, such as cushions, window treatments, mattresses, dish cloths (remember, NeutrOlene is environmentally, animal and human friendly) towels and bath rugs. 

The First American Deodorant. For two years, high school student Edna Murphey from Cincinnati had been trying unsuccessfully to promote an antiperspirant her father, a surgeon, had invented to keep his hands sweat-free in the operating room.

Murphey had tried her dad’s liquid antiperspirant in her armpits, discovered that it thwarted wetness and smell, named the antiperspirant Odorono (Odor? Oh No!) and decided to start a company.

But business didn’t go well—at first. Borrowing $150 from her grandfather, she rented an office workshop but then had to move the operation to her parents’ basement because her team of door-to-door saleswomen didn’t pull in enough revenue. Murphey approached drugstore retailers who either refused to stock the product or who returned the bottles of Odorono back, unsold.

In the 1910s deodorants and antiperspirants were relatively new inventions. The first deodorant, which killed odor-producing bacteria, was called Mum and had been trademarked in 1888, while the first antiperspirant, which thwarts both sweat-production and bacterial growth, was called Everdry and launched in 1903.

This was still very much a Victorian society, and nobody talked about perspiration, or any other bodily functions in public. Instead, most people’s solution to body odor was to wash regularly and then to overwhelm any emerging stink with perfume. Those concerned about sweat percolating through clothing wore dress shields, cotton or rubber pads placed in armpit areas which protected fabric from perspiration on a hot day.

Yet 100 years later, the deodorant and antiperspirant industry is worth $18 billion. The transformation from niche invention to a blockbuster product was in part kick-started by Murphey, whose nascent business was nearly a failure.

According to Odorono company files at Duke University, Edna Murphey’s Odorono booth at the 1912 Atlantic City exposition initially appeared to be another bust for the product.

“The exhibition demonstrator could not sell any Odorono at first and wired back [to Murphey to send some cold cream to cover expenses,” notes a company history of Odorono. 

Luckily, the exposition lasted all summer. As attendees wilted in the heat and sweat through their clothing, interest in Odorono rose. Suddenly Murphey had customers across the country and $30,000 in sales to spend on promotion.

Orchid stinks like 1,000 dead elephants rotting in the sun.  Back in the 1960s, orchid corsages were a big deal. Delicately colorful in their tropical beauty, there are some that stand out -- and not for their beauty.

Last July, a large specimen of Bulbophyllum phalaenopsis was donated to the Smithsonian Gardens. Donors Lynn Cook and Troy Ray of Penn Valley, Pennsylvania, dubbed it ‘Bucky;’ a name that lives on among Smithsonian horticulturalists now caring for the new plant.

At the time it was originally acquired a couple of decades ago, many had read about it and its remarkable ecology but few had seen it. The flower head consists of about 15 to 20 reddish-brown (meat-colored) flowers covered with fleshy projections said to resemble wriggling maggots.

Targeting female carrion flies as pollinators, it evolved a nasty fragrance to match its unsightly appearance. Early writings claim it emitted an aroma like the stench of "a thousand dead elephants rotting in the sun," so staffers have been waiting many months to experience Bucky’s smell.

Buds formed under the huge floppy leaves, one of 2,000 species in this . When they opened and emitted the overwhelming stench, the greenhouse was overwhelmed. 

The thick storage organs in the stem requires daily water and frequent feeds. It is the most famous species in the Bulbophyllum  section Macrobulbon, of which the Orchid Collection has an almost complete set.

The species share the same pollination strategy so more stinky orchids are expected. The plant resembles Phalaenopsis gigantea, thelargest Phalaenopsis species (from Borneo). But other than both being in the orchid family, they are not closely related.