Sausage Poison, Rebranded
Between 1817 and 1822, the German doctor and poet Justinus Kerner studied a run of deaths in Württemberg. They were all linked to badly prepared blood sausages. The victims suffered blurred vision, drooping eyelids, difficulty swallowing, and then paralysis that crept down the body until breathing stopped. Kerner called the cause Wurstgift: sausage poison.
Later, scientists named the illness after the Latin word for sausage, botulus. It became botulism, and the bacterium that causes it, Clostridium botulinum. The toxin it produces is the deadliest natural substance ever recorded. Fractions of a microgram can kill a person.
Kerner noticed something else, though. In small amounts, the poison relaxed muscles. He suggested it might one day be used to treat overactive nerves. It took about 150 years, but he was right.
In the 1970s and 80s, an American eye doctor, Alan Scott, used tiny doses of the toxin to treat crossed eyes. He called his drug Oculinum, “eye aligner”. It was a sensible medical name. When the pharmaceutical company Allergan bought it, the drug got a new name: Botox.
Look at what that name does. Bo- hints at the source without saying it. -tox is short and modern and sounds faintly technical. There’s no sausage and no poison, and nothing that says one of the deadliest substances known is about to be injected into your forehead. In 2002 it was approved for frown lines, and the name became one of the most famous in cosmetics.
Would it have sold as well under its full name? “I’m getting my botulinum toxin done on Thursday” doesn’t have quite the same ring. Neither does “a little sausage poison around the eyes”.
This isn’t deception. Every Botox patient is told what it is. It’s framing, and naming is the most powerful framing there is. The name decides what a person thinks about before they think anything else. Name a thing after its origin and people think about its origin. Name it after its effect and they think about the effect.
Businesses do this every day, sometimes well and sometimes cynically. Redundancies become “restructuring”. Price rises become “pricing adjustments”. Fees become “service charges”. The question isn’t whether to name things carefully, because you should. It’s whether the name helps people understand the thing, or helps them avoid understanding it.
Botox gets away with it because the product delivers what the name promises. A name that hides the truth only works until someone finds out what’s in the syringe.
