prevented hemorrhoids . Gayetty was so proud of his therapeutic bathroom paper that he had his name printed on each sheet . But his success was limited . Americans soon grew accustomed to wiping with the Sears Roebuck catalog , and they saw no need to spend money on something that came in the mail for free . Toilet paper took its next leap forward in 1890 , when two brothers named Clarence and E. Irvin Scott popularized the concept of toilet paper on a roll . The Scotts ' brand became more successful than Gayetty 's medicated wipes , in part because they built a steady trade selling toilet paper to hotels and drugstores . But it was still an uphill battle to get the public to openly buy the product , largely because Americans remained embarrassed by bodily functions . In fact , the Scott brothers were so ashamed of the nature of their work that they did n't take proper credit for their innovation until 1902 . `` No one wanted to ask for it by name , '' says Dave Praeger , author of `` Poop Culture : How America Is Shaped by Its Grossest National
-LRB- Mental Floss -RRB- -- Since the dawn of time , people have found nifty ways to clean up after the bathroom act . The most common solution was simply to grab what was at hand : coconuts , shells , snow , moss , hay , leaves , grass , corncobs , sheep 's wool -- and , later , thanks to the printing press -- newspapers , magazines , and pages of books . The average American uses 57 squares a day and 50 pounds of toilet paper per year . The ancient Greeks used clay and stone ; the Romans , sponges and salt water . But the idea of a commercial product designed solely to wipe one 's bum ? That started about 150 years ago , right here in the U.S.A. . In less than a century , Uncle Sam 's marketing genius turned something disposable into something indispensable . Toilet paper gets on a roll The first products designed specifically to wipe one 's nethers were aloe-infused sheets of manila hemp dispensed from Kleenex-like boxes . They were invented in 1857 by a New York entrepreneur named Joseph Gayetty , who claimed his sheets