But It Actually Came From ...
The concept of using chemicals to plug up your armpit's sweat-holes goes all the way back to ... the early 20th century. That's it.
Before that, shockingly, sweating was considered simply a thing that humans did. Sure, it could be inconvenient -- on a hot day, women wore dress shields to sop up all the nastiness oozing from their pores and protect their clothing, while men simply wrung out their undershirts once in a while -- but it wasn't something that people really gave much thought to. In fact, openly discussing bodily functions like sweating was considered impolite at the time.
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"It smells like a baboon's rancid taint in here. I'm sure that has nothing to do with you, dear Meredith."
Then along came Edna Murphey with a brand new chemical developed by her dad to keep his hands dry while performing surgery (we should probably mention that he was, in fact, a surgeon). Murphey found that the product could be used to prevent sweating when slathered all over her armpits. So she bottled it up and named it Odorono (Odor? Oh no!), because naming things was not Murphey's strong suit.
Apparently, selling her new wonder product wasn't her strong suit, either, because Murphey immediately ran into a serious roadblock -- people had no idea why they were supposed to want something that stopped them from sweating. Like if they came out with a product today that slowed how fast your fingernails grew, the big reaction would be "Uh, is this really a problem that needs to be solved?"
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"Over the course of a lifetime, Nail-Ex shaves entire minutes off of your hygiene routine."
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