In St. Louis, 1879, Jordan Lambert and Dr. Joseph Lawrence began marketing an all-purpose antiseptic solution called Listerine. They obtained permission from British surgeon Joseph Lister, who had developed the notion that germs spread infection and carbolic acid could kill them, to name the product after him. At first it was sold as a surgical antiseptic, also useful for cleaning floors, as an after-shave and for curing conditions ranging from dandruff to gonorrhea. In 1885, Lawrence sold out to the new Lambert Pharmacal Co. Jordan Lambert continued and later began selling a milder form of Listerine to dentists and as an oral antiseptic.
Jordan died at age 38 in 1889, his wife died three months later. They left five boys and one girl. One son, Albert Bond “Doc” Lambert became infatuated with flying. In 1926, he rounded up some pals to help their buddy Slim Lindbergh buy an airplane to fly the Atlantic in 1927. One son, Jerry, went to Princeton and blew through what would be $15.9 million in today’s dollars. Deeply in debt, he went back to St. Louis in 1908 to work at the company’s firm.
In 1922 Jerry Lambert learned that the medical term for bad breath was halitosis. That gave him an idea. He would turn halitosis into a national scourge for which Listerine was the cure. Money began pouring in. Jerry took Lambert Pharmacal public in 1928, retired at 42, and got out of the stock market before the crash of 1929.
Today’s sermon has to do with “The Dishonest Manager,” Luke 16: 1-10. We don’t know what the manager did that initially led to his boss firing him, but was it any worse than creating “a national scourge” out of halitosis? Probably was. Still, there was a time when Jerry Lambert would be called dishonest. Today he’s regarded as a marketing genius. Which one do you think it is ? -DJ
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