13 Examples Of Hygiene Habits During The Wild West

facts first presents 13 examples of hygiene habits during the Wild West living in the Wild West wasn't easy men and women traveled across North America and struggled with harsh weather and rough terrain because traveling was difficult and it was hard to find clean water many people walked around filthy it wasn't just the bathing schedules that made the Wild West a pretty nasty time to live though here are 13 examples of hygiene habits during the Wild West Before we jump into our video jump down to the comments yourself and let us know if you could live in the Wild West would you do it also be sure to subscribe and click the notification valve so you don't miss our future videos during the Wild West many beds were made of straw and hay this would often lead them to becoming infested with what was known then as seem squirrels and what we know today as lice if the bed was set up in a poorly insulated building people also had to worry about mosquitos being attracted to human waste in the house a woman who visited the Wild West from 1883 to 1888 Rose Pender recalled trying to sleep one night but because there were so many bugs she got very little rest also people didn't have screens on their windows back then and that meant bugs would travel back and forth from the home to the outhouse and back again this was a very unhygenic and unsanitary way to live while some people in the Wild West went to the woods to relieve themselves many had an outhouse now houses were built close to the home to make going to the bathroom safe and convenient inside the outhouse families would dig a hole and when the hole was full the family would cover it up and then dig another hole this often would mean moving outhouse from time to time the outhouse of course smelled horrible and many people would try to mask the odor with lime or live flies and black widow spiders would make the outhouse their home and would often bite while a person was trying to use the bathroom because toilet paper was not available back then people would use leaves corn cobs or grass it was just a messy situation all around water was essential for the people of the Wild West just to survive but it was also hard to find if a house located upstream built an outhouse the waste would contaminate the clean water nearby stagnant water however attracted flies and other insects and these bugs would leave behind excrement and waste so that water wasn't safe to drink either the people would try and collect rainwater in cisterns that would keep the water clean until dust and other contaminants got mixed into it people tried to conserve water by not washing the dishes not washing their clothing or washing their clothing in their dirty bathwater families would often bathe only once a week and they would all share the same bath water when doing so a man named Frank Clifford wrote about his time in the American West he was an associate of Billy the Kid and he described having his hair washed with soap wheat made by a Mexican woman she make the shampoo from a yucca plant and after she washed his hair it'd be soft clean and lustrous people would often make their own soap out of animal fat they also used this fat to make candles the soap was harsh and it was also used for the candles it caused skin irritation many people would avoid using soap because they believed that being too clean would actually open their pores to germs and other diseases people in the American West thought that it was healthier not to bathe very often that made for some very smelly people especially during the hot summer months in the Wild West toothbrushes toothpaste and dental floss didn't exist if a person got a cavity or if the tooth rotted it would just be pulled out since they didn't have modern dentistry back then people had to visit the barber or a blacksmith in order to get the tooth removed patients were given whiskey to take a little bit of the edge off and tools that resemble pliers were used to pull the tooth in an effort to keep their teeth healthy people would visit stagecoach stop offs and public establishments where they could use a community toothbrush yes a community toothbrush they also picked food out of their teeth with knives saloons in the Wild West didn't have stools like we envision them they did have rails on the bottom to lean on them they also had spittoons along the top of the bar there was either an additional rail or a series of hooks these were installed to hold towels that men would use to wipe the beer phone from their mouths when patrons would use these towels that would often spread germs and diseases because the towels weren't replaced dust was a widespread problem in the Wild West dust storms and heavy winds would often pick up dust and send large clouds into the air and into homes not only was the dust threatening to the settlers but also their cattle Sarah Atherton described her journey to the American West she traveled with her husband Jed and their children and she says that there was dust everywhere her eyes burned terribly Sarah Raymond herdin traveled from Missouri to Montana territory during the late 1860's she described her journey saying that the dust was so bad that it was almost knee-deep in places she says that when the group stopped for the night the boys faces were covered with dust she added the dust filled their noses and their eyes and it took plenty of water to get their faces clean there were saloons all over the western frontier and they all had spittoons and cuspidors in the front of the bar men who chewed tobacco would often spit and it would end up on the floor the spit would be covered sometimes with sawdust which caused people to come down with pneumonia and tuberculosis this became a significant issue for those who rented the floors of saloons to camp for the night many would sleep on the floors that were covered with germs and bacteria to prevent these serious diseases many places banned spitting altogether for example if you were caught spitting on the train platforms or in the train stations it was punishable with a $500 fine a year in prison or both that was a lot of money back then laundry plumbing and dishwashing would often take place in the water that was used for drinking and that made it really common for the diseases to spread through camps and settlements during the 19th century a group of Mormon migrants came down with cholera and they saw it as a punishment from God the disease also wiped out a large number of Native Americans while this was a widespread condition it didn't claim as many Native lives as smallpox did back then having no diseases in a camp was unheard of it was actually a miracle people were dying due to cholera and smallpox it all had to do with poor hygiene and dirty water people used whiskey for a number of things in the Wild West they used it to disinfect and for pain relief they also used it to wash their hair people in the Wild West they'd combine whiskey castor oil and lavender after washing their hair the people would wash it out with rain water or with water softened with borax when women would wash their hair they often combed it thoroughly and then curled their hair using heated pencils Cowboys soldiers and other man in the Wild West often went long periods of time without bathing they were so busy during the day and when they did take a bath it'd be in a stream or a river and this worked out fine during the hot summer months but during the winter that was impossible so men rarely bathed women washed their faces every morning they would often go to a spring or a stream to wash their faces and take a drink since they had no privacy they didn't take complete baths on a regular basis but they were much cleaner than the men women also washed their clothes more often than men did soldiers and cowboys didn't have much time and usually only had one set of clothes so when they washed their clothes in a stream or a river it wasn't very often in 2005 a group of archaeologists found a pair of tweezers at a dig site in Deadwood South Dakota there was a large Chinese population that lived in Deadwood and it's believed that the tweezers were used daily in that community the Chinese didn't shave instead they tweezed their facial hair they also used the tweezers for smoking opium but they believed the tweezers they found were for hygiene some of the best-known figures from the Wild West had long hair James Butler Wild Bill Hickok and George Armstrong Custer all wore their hair long Custer would use cinnamon oil to make his hair smell nice when cowboys visited towns that often treat themselves to haircuts and shaves it also pay for a hot bath fresh clothes and home-cooked food many would purchase scented hair tonic along the way during the late 19th century long hair was out and men started cutting their hair regularly it's believed that men began to wear their hair shorter as a rejection of Antebellum norms when men began to cut their hair short Native American men continued to wear their is long well now that we've gone through our lists have you changed your mind about living in the Wild West or not tell us in the comments and subscribe for more [Music]

Channel: Facts Verse

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Keywords: facts verse, hygiene routines, hygiene tips, hygiene, medieval hygiene, wild west, old west, dirty dan, trail dust town, fact verse, hygiene routines 2020, the wild wild west, hygiene habits, step mother, the call of the wild, the wild, the wild west, the old west, american history, wild west history, old west photos, hygiene in the old west, life in the old west, hygiene in the wild west, wild west photos, wild west food, life in the wild west, weird history

Id: BHfNIfqLuzs

Length: 10min 12sec (612 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 18 2020