to menstrual rags, but its modern usage is as a menstrual euphemism. Until disposable menstrual pads were created, cloth or reusable pads were widely used to collect menstrual blood. Women often used a variety of home-made menstrual pads which they crafted from various fabrics, or other absorbent materials, to collect menstrual blood. Even after disposable pads were commercially available, for several years they were too expensive for many women to afford. When they could be afforded, women were allowed to place money in a box so that they would not have to speak to the clerk and take a box of Kotex pads from the counter themselves. It took several years for disposable menstrual pads to become commonplace. However, they are now used nearly exclusively in most of the industrialized world. The first of the disposable pads were generally in the form of a cotton wool or similar fibrous rectangle covered with an absorbent liner. The liner ends were extended front and back so as to fit through loops in a special girdle or belt worn beneath undergarments. This design was notorious for slipping either forward or back of the intended position. Disposable menstrual pads grew from a Benjamin Franklin invention created to help stop wounded soldiers from bleeding, but appear to have been first commercially available from around 1880 with Thomas and William Southall's pad. The first commercially available American disposable napkins were Lister's Towels created by Johnson & Johnson in 1888. Disposable pads had their start with nurses using their wood pulp bandages to absorb their menstrual flow, creating a pad that was made from easily obtainable materials and inexpensive enough to throw away after use. Kotex's first advertisement for products made with this wood pulp (cellucotton) appeared in January 1921. Johnson & Johnson introduced Modess Sanitary Napkins in 1926, researched by Lillian Gilbreth. Lilian Gilbreth's market research report published in 1927 gives valuable information about women's experience of menstruation in 1920s America. The surveys she conducted on over 1000 women reveal that "the most significant fact concerning the marketing angle of the sanitary napkin [...] is that it is availability that sells a napkin."Several of the first disposable pad manufacturers were also manufacturers of bandages, which could give an indication of what these products were like. In 1956, Mary Kenner obtained a patent for an adjustable sanitary belt with an inbuilt, moisture-proof napkin pocket. However, the company