Advertising poster for “Papier d’Arménie”

“Papier d’Arménie”, or “Armenian Paper”, is a room air freshener: sheets of paper soaked in the dried sap of styrax trees. In the late 19th century Auguste Ponsot noticed that Armenian housewives burned paper soaked in this sap as a fragrant and disinfecting agent. With the help of the pharmacist Henri Rivier he adopted the custom, dissolving benzoin resin in alcohol and soaking paper in it. Since 1888 the paper has been produced in Montrouge; it is still made today and sold all over the world.

The French poster is headed “Purify the air by burning Papier d’Arménie”. A clown with a whip drives away figures representing diseases (cholera, typhoid, smallpox and others) and a skeleton with a scythe. At the bottom it says the paper is sold in all pharmacies.