Vaseline was discovered way back in
1859. A young
chemist from
Brooklyn was attempting to make a living selling
kerosene.
At the time, the great oil strikes in
Pennsylvania pretty much stomped out his business. The lack of kerosene did not stop Robert Chesebrough from making it
rich! No sir, he did what any
money-hungry red-blooded American would do...he got into his horse and buggy and went straight to Titusville Pennsylvania to strike it
rich in
oil.
When he got there, Bobby was not so much interested in digging for oil as he was in investigating a paraffin-like goo that would stick to all the
drilling
rigs and cause them to seize up.
What mystified Mr. Chesebrough was not the fact that this stuff was messy and a
pain in the
ass to all the oil workers, rather he was interested in the fact that when applied to
cuts and
burns, this stuff would
magically make it
heal faster.
Being a man of
science, R.C. bottled some up and took it home to his
laboratory in N.Y. He eventually extracted the key ingredient - a
translucent material we know to be
petroleum jelly.
When purified he began to test it on himself, becoming a masochist, he inflicted numerous cuts and burns to his body and then treated them with this
stuff. As predicted they all healed quickly. Mr. Chesebrough had found his oil, but not the thick black liquid that is used to develop kerosene, but rather a white-yellow jellatonous goo that was to be used for numerous occasions.
Within the next year, Robby was hoofing it across the Eastern States selling this stuff and making a
fortune. He called it
Vaseline, potentially due to keeping it in his wife's
vases and the fact that new oil based
products ended in *ine*. Vaseline is now owned by Chesebrough-Ponds.
People used and still use vaseline for a variety of things such as an ointment for cuts and bruises, removing
stains from
furniture,
polishing
wood surfaces, treating
leather, preventing
rust (which can not work on
aluminum) and of course as a
sexual aid, not unlike
KY jelly. People have used it to shine their shoes and pharmacists used it as a base for other medicines, and in modern times drug companies are using it as a base for
lip balms.
Lip balms have been accused of being an addictive substance; however, vaseline does not seem to be the agent involved.