Sir Joseph Lister, a noted English surgeon, ended his lecture on airborne germs by pacing the auditorium rows. “Would everyone please swing out your arms as wide as possible.”

More than one participant hit their neighbor as they spread their arms in the theater chairs. In fact the only people that were not affected by this exercise happened to be sitting by their lonesome with none to strike them.

“We are all influenced by our neighbors, you know.”

Robert Wood Johnson knew. He could smell the problem from the front row of the lecture hall. The first whiff told him onions. He puckered his mouth and nuzzled a deep gust; this time sure that the lecturer’s lunch included Jersey Dogs.

“We must isolate infections! They spread like your diseased arms to your neighbor—links and links of infections. And the doctors cut open their patience, and the patience suck up all the germs of the doctor.” Lister put his hands on his hips, flexing his posture to the most self-assured position. “Does anyone doubt that the patients are getting sick from their doctors?!”

It was obvious that R. Wood wanted to clap with everyone else. He even stood. Two hundred hands came together and pushed the lingering smell of onions all around whence before it was only a little cluster. Men opened their mouths to whistle, they sucked in the airborne breath mites, and then laced their tonsils with onion caul. The crowd took in all the particles-- tongues stuck them, saliva imprinted the pheromone and reproduced the leaping bugs in seconds-- as one man turned to his neighbor, “Brilliant! Just brilliant,” passing on the remnants of the doctor to amplify someone’s garlic; the garlic merged with anchovies, anchovy breath played with smoker’s phlegm; oral-exhaust seeped with every billow.

R. Wood crouched in the line and covered his mouth by pulling over his blazer. More than anyone, he anticipated the door. “Infections must be isolated!” Screamed Lister as the choir of hosts coughed out their agreement. The translucent airs of the lecture hall, gloomed like a chimney stuffed with flaky skin cells; perspiration swarmed with passion; the exit portal a listless vacuum.

After finally escaping, R. Wood strained to take in the fresh air of the industrial city. His feet started their automatic homing movement while his mind spun and sizzled to cure the epidemic.

R. Wood came home to find his brother lying on his side, applying pressure to an infection in his cheek. “Looks like Martha really whopped you one!” James Wood Johnson felt no humor, “Sure she got in a few stabs but that’s nothing compared to what the doctor did.” R. Wood squat down to have a look at the yellowish green spot below J. Wood’s right eye. “Hit you with a pan?”

“No, she only got me with a sewing needle.”

“Then how did it get so big and green?” J. Wood explained that he bent down to thread a needle for his wife, pulling it close to make use of the light. In a moment of haste, Martha bumped her husband, sending the needle in at an angle, then the flesh sliced when he tried to remove it quickly. “So why did you go to a doctor for a little thing like a needle?”

“That was my fault, R. Wood.” Martha fluttered her eyelashes as if the butterfly wings would sweep away the injury. “I just couldn’t stand the idea of hurting J. Wood. I made him promise to see a doctor.” Robert Wood looked at his sister-in-law. He wondered if she could still speak with a large gauze cloth tucked around her lips. How dirty are the mouths of even the naïve. R. Wood contemplated that the family should only talk in words, written on small tablets hanging from a neck string. They could entertain conversations in graphite while they took their midday tea.

“You listening?” His brother tried to lean over to his ear, shooting his mouth cannon to the unprotected opening on the side of his head. R. Wood covered his ears and moved away.

“What?”

“… So I waited for hours in the hospital room. “ The brother raised his voice instead of asking why the other would clog his ears. “...A nurse came by. She squeezed out the old blood then said to tell her when the wound filled up again. It took 3 hours for a doctor! (Well,) he finally came by, looked at my shoes, and asked the nurse if I paid cash. Then he told me I needed an operation right away to save my eye.” J. Wood waited to see if this had any impact.

“Oh my. Your eye! Heavens to Betsy.” Martha was cut off by a sharp look by her husband. He hadn’t told her the story before and he expected some reverence.

“How was his breath?” asked R. Wood as he uncovered his ears, hopeful at last to be a safe distance away. “Breath? Like iodine, what does it matter? I came out worst than when I went in!” J. Wood continued to complain about the expensive hospital visit while his cheek bulged out in green.

The next day R. Wood infected his brother with the dream that they would get rich by selling medical supplies that snuffed out surgeon’s breath. J. Wood was still steamed about the needle surgery and couldn’t be more please at a chance of taking hospital money. The brother had an awful time of convincing his new wife that they should invest their savings for a house into an untested business. After a long night of romantic persuasion she was sure that the Johnson brothers would succeed in anything. Johnson and Johnson were founded in 1885.

The brothers opened shop in an old wallpaper factory in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Martha set up a kitchen with fine cookery to make French cuisine at a moment’s notice. The first challenge was that neither of the men liked French cooking. They stocked and sold cotton swabbing, alcohol, gauze, twine, and tape. At the end of the day the only thing in their minds was cotton dust and alcohol. The second challenge was that Martha couldn’t cook.

J. Wood smelled the beef sizzle and came around when his last load was packed. He found his wife hopping around with her hands in the air. “What’s wrong?” She stopped only long enough to show him the burn marks on her fingers. J. Wood ran to his pile of boxes. He kicked and pulled his stock until a passage was made to the large bale of cotton. The warehouse was full of the company’s first inventory bought in quantity. The husband nervously fidgeted with the puffs, then cut out a small palm of cotton, doused it with alcohol, and fixed it down to his wife’s finger with some tape. This took some time to do while the stove sizzled dinner to blackness.

R. Wood came in and turned off all the fires. The food was burned and everyone went to bed with only a cup of fruit for dinner.

After two weeks of alcohol, cotton, and fruit, R. Wood was getting light headed when he tried to talk to his customers. “We have got to get a new cook!” He screamed at his little brother. Being that the warehouse was only one room, partitioned off by sheets with little nameplates above the door of each section, Martha heard it all and soon started to cry. J Wood didn’t appreciate his brother being so thoughtless and plainly stated, “How would you feel if I decided to pull out?”

The older brother wouldn’t listen though. And after a moment of silent fuming, R. Wood began the process of consoling:

“Has my breath been better since we started eating all this fruit?” J. Wood was astonished that his brother would think of something so petty when their careers were frozen over cooking. When R. Wood stopped smelling his palm before his mouth, the men agreed to hire a new stocker that could assist Martha in her cooking. They went into the kitchen, apologizing and complimenting Martha, who still burned her hands every time she cooked.

Earl Dickson was hired the next day to stock and sell the cotton products (and assist Martha in the kitchen). The fledgling firm had just started and so couldn’t afford a separate clerk; they couldn’t afford an experienced chef. Besides, Martha wouldn’t have a stranger in her kitchen, she rather take the daily burns and when that failed the men would just have to enjoy her fruit cups. Martha could often cut whole cratefuls without bleeding.

Dickson was an able clerk, ready to swap stories with the most prominent of hospital officers. R. Wood liked his neat appearance, fresh breath, and watched as the sales grew. Many of the buyers came at mealtimes, which posed a problem. For Dickson had to stop everything to run to Martha and bandage her burns. After one particular order was flubbed, Martha yelling for help, with the buyer in a hurry and Earl in the middle—the clerk took to teaching Martha, “the cook,” how to prep for mealtime.

Dickson laid out a roll of tape with the sticky side up. He put down cotton doused in alcohol every few inches, then cut the strips and left them stuck to a wax board. One corner of each of the strips hung over in a short curl. “Think you can grab it with one hand?” Martha gave it a try and from then on she burned less food than fingers. J. Wood was happy and R. Wood tried to make a larger version to stick from ear to ear. “Can you hear me with this?” The company president’s words came out garbled while the large bandage did nothing more than muffle his breathing. J. Wood nodded that he could hear perfectly though he was more preoccupied with the wait for supper. R. Wood became the first corporate communicator to purposely garble his directions.