Which everyday personal care product was originally invented as a cheap battlefield bandage during World War I?

From wartime dressing to Kotex

The product was the disposable sanitary napkin. Its precursor, Cellucotton, was a highly absorbent material made from processed wood pulp and developed by Kimberly-Clark as a substitute for cotton in surgical dressings during World War I. Wartime shortages made an inexpensive alternative valuable, and nurses used the material to absorb blood in military hospitals.

A new use after the war

Some nurses also found Cellucotton useful for menstrual care. That practical use helped point the company toward a civilian product: in 1920, Kimberly-Clark began selling the material as Kotex sanitary napkins.

Turning a dressing into a consumer product meant more than changing its name. A battlefield supply could be handled and distributed as medical material; a retail product needed packaging and a way to reach customers who might be reluctant to ask for it openly. Early Kotex was sold in drugstores, and the company worked with retailers on more discreet purchasing arrangements.

The shift gave an industrial wartime material a second life in everyday personal care. A material designed to make scarce medical cotton go further became the basis for a product people could use and discard at home.