A Brief History of Soap

it might seem surprising since so many of us seem to just now be learning how to properly wash our hands but soap has been with us for a very long time market research suggests that the global soap market will reach about 22 billion US dollars annually by 2022 and about 13 billion bars of soap or sold the United States every year but the use of soap has ebbed and flowed over the millennia based on both inventions and changes in convention the surprising history of soap deserves to be remembered chemically soap is the alkali salt of fatty acid most commonly made by mixing fats and oils with an alkali base in a chemical process called saponification the unique properties of soap are derived from its molecular structure a molecule that binds easily with water on one end while the other end bonds easily to oils because of this structure soap cleans in a couple of ways many viruses have lipid membranes on the outside that both protect the pathogen and contain proteins that allow the pathogen to infect cells when you wash with soap and water the ends of soap molecules that avoid water are attracted to oils embed themselves in these membranes in essence tearing the pathogen apart but in water soap molecules also form Selleck structures called micelles and these are tiny balls or bubbles with the hydrophilic or the ends attracted to water on the outside and the lipophilic are the ends attracted to oils on the inside these micelles surround grime like dirt broken up viruses and bacteria which are then rinsed away in the water while there are some natural soap like substances usually plant substances that lather in water they do not have the unique chemical properties of soap there is a difference between soap and detergent which is usually made by mixing chemicals in a mixer while they are similar both including molecules that attract water on one end and oil on the other detergent is made to be more soluble in water especially hard water so that is less likely to bind to calcium and create soap scum when used in a machine it isn't clear when humans came up with the secret to making soap but it is a simple enough process and it could have been discovered by accident wood ash is highly alkaline and so soap might have been discovered when fat from meat cooking on a fire fell into wood ash a drain and you have soap there's archaeological evidence of manufactured so found in clay jars in ancient Babylon as early as 2800 BC a babylon clay tablet dated 2200 BC provides a recipe for self using water alkali and Cocina oil will derive from the bark of an evergreen tree but historians surmise that soap might not have been used for bathing that is part of the process of textile making and ancient Egyptian papyrus dated to around 1500 BC describes the making of soap by combining animal and vegetable oils with alkaline salts and suggests the substance be used to treat skin diseases but also for washing there is some disagreement about soap in ancient Greece in Rome despite cultures that embrace bathing and cleanliness the ancient Greeks and Romans did not generally use soap for personal washing rather they rub themselves with pumice or clay and then applied oil and that whole lot was scraped off with a scraper called a Stijl there is some evidence that Greeks and Romans knew of soap the Roman necklace plenty the elder mentioned suppo the Latin word for soap in 77 ad however the substance may not have been saponified and was described as a waxy substance used by Gauls in their hair it's possible that the Greek physician Galen describes soap in the second century AD including the process by which it was made from lye and suggested it for bathing however the reference was not made until the Middle Ages and may have been wrongfully attributed to Galen likewise a process of soap banking is described by an alchemist named Zosima sap innopolis in Rome in Egypt in the 4th century however as with the Galen reference the first note of the reference was long after the period and might not be original but might have been added after there's a modern myth that a large soap factory was discovered in the ruins of Pompeii however archaeologists actually not sure the purpose of the site that some regard is a soap factory and note that soap was never found among toilet articles in Pompeii we simply don't know for sure if ancient Greeks and Romans were familiar with or used soap a legend that soap was discovered in the Roman era when animal fats rendered from animals sacrificed on top of Mount SAPO mixed with ash in a stream and local women discovered that the resulting water was better for washing clothes is almost certainly myth the legend softn used to describe the origin of the word soap do not appear in ancient times and Roman sacrifices to burn the actual animal flash which would have created the necessary tallow for the process to occur and there is no record of an actual mount SAPO rather the name soap was derived from Germanic languages but what we really don't know for sure of ancient Greeks and Romans used soap we know that soap was well known in Europe during the Middle Ages that about thousand year period between the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century and the Renaissance in the 15th century it's kind of a popular myth that people in the Middle Ages were filthy we tend to think that they never bathed at all but in fact most historians agree that people bathed on a fairly regular basis during the Middle Ages and yes they did use soap books of Secrets were compilations of recipes and medicinal formulas and whether we're not commonly produced until the 16th century they include many recipes for the making of soap in the home those recipes were apparently handed down folk recipes using ingredients usually made from tallow rendered animal fats that a fifth century peasant would have been able to readily access that is to say even peasants of the Middle Ages probably made soap in their own homes and likely bathed with it on a regular basis although soap would have been relatively soft dark in color and without the pleasant smell of perfume soaps by the end of the 6th century there was a record a guild of soap makers in Naples and an administrative work in the time of Charlemagne includes soap as an item to be tallied by royal stewards the wealthy might have been able to bathe in their own home but many people would have bathed in public bath houses or natural streams cleanliness was supported by the Catholic Church which built public bath houses near religious and pilgrimage sites however public bath houses could also be places of prostitution and bathing could be seen as an indulgence so there were sometimes strictures by the church authorities regarding excessive bathing bathing may vary by region in season but bathe they did at the same time so production flourished in the Middle East during the time called the Islamic Golden Age unlike European recipes soap production in the Middle East was often done using vegetable fats especially olive oil sense such as Laurel oil and salt which helped separate out glycerine making the soap harder than European soap recipes soap was produced industrially and might have been brought back along with bathing traditions by Crusaders such soaps making recipes were carried back to Europe in the high to late Middle Ages and became the basis of soap manufacturing for dish olive oil soaps like castile soap and Marseille soap which are still produced today but the imperative for bathing declined somewhat in the late Middle Ages part of this had to do with attitudes about public bathing in the age of the Reformation but it also represented changes in social norms in terms of religion the care of one's clothing became more a measure of both the purity of the soul and a person's social class the late Middle Ages Assaf famines and plagues and medical thinking in the period dictated that bathing may allow illness or miasma to pass into the body through the pores soap was used of course to wash those clothes but etiquette manuals of the late Middle Ages often advised only washing those parts of the body seen in public as an extreme example French king louis xiv was said to have been terrified of baths only tanky them when recommended by his doctors there's a long-standing belief that he only took three baths his entire life a claim that is likely an exaggeration but a russian ambassador once remarked that the sun king stunk like a wild animal he became famous for hiding his stink which also famously included terrible halitosis with perfumes he was however scrupulous about his clothing is that both represented his character and was seen as a way to draw illness from the body the man who only bathed when doctors ordered was said to have changed his underwear which was washed in a special perfume three times a day England was relatively less soap averse in the period castile soap imported from Spain was particularly popular among the court and Queen Elizabeth the first was said to be the relatively frequent every four weeks soap ever created a controversy in England when they cash-strapped Carolinian King Charles the first raised money during the period of so-called personal rule by selling a patent for the making of soap Charles who married a Roman Catholic Henrietta Maria of France was already seen as being too Catholic by English Protestant groups the royal patent for soap went to a company overseen by Richard Weston the first Earl of Portland and the Chancellor of the Exchequer that had Catholics on its governing board anti Catholics were appalled and labelled the soap Popish soap the soap was not only said to damage both linen and wash women's hands but was also alleged to have scarred the soul well it can't be said to be a causal factor of the scandal over Pope so prep resented the fiscal difficulties perception of graft among the nobility unpopular decisions and struggles with Puritans that drove the English Civil War and Charles the first execution mavin came into a revival in Europe in the latter part of the 18th century as medical opinions change and again started tout the health benefits of bathing but so pregnant to an obstacle in England when in 1712 England instituted a soap tax largely to help pay for wars in North America while the tax produced significant revenue for the crown it tripled the price of soap but essentially making into a luxury item largely unaffordable to the masses the tax came at a time of many other taxes including a brick tax a candle tax at clock taksa gin tax and most egregious for the history guy a hat tax of course taxes were also applied to the American colonies in the era and became a leading car through yet another costly war the war for American independence the English soap tax drove out many soap manufacturers and led to a burgeoning trade in the smuggling of soap the unpopular tax wasn't repealed until 1853 even though soap was being manufactured bunch of the soap used throughout the world was still made in small batches by artisans or at home using traditional recipes in 1790 French chemist Nicolas LeBlanc developed a process for making soda ash and alkali from common salt a process that was later improved by Belgian chemist Ernest Solvay this allowed the larger manufacturing of self which by the 1850s was one of the fastest growing industries in the United States so it became a product driven by the advent both of the Industrial Revolution and some of the first mass marketing campaigns the work of Florence Nightingale in hospitals during the Crimean War demonstrated the importance of hygiene including washing hands with soap to prevent infection even before germ theory was widely accepted hand-washing became a vital tool in controlling outbreaks like cholera which depended upon the fecal-oral route transmission during the u.s Civil War the United States sanitary commission utilize nightingales ideas and demonstrated that washing with soap could reduce military mortality that war helped to build the Empire of two brothers-in-law William Procter James gamble whose contract provides soap to the Union helped to expand their business when the Union soldiers went home they brought back Procter and gave products with them and made the company household name Procter and Gamble is now one of the world's leading producers of personal care and hygiene products Procter & Gamble eventually refined soap manufacturing using continuous processing that eliminated the need for the fats to be boiled together speeding the process of soap making the growing use of indoor plumbing help to drive the market and make soap ubiquitous a shortage of animal oils during the first world war led German scientists to seek an industrial alternative and that led to the development of artificially produce saturated fatty alcohol and that could be turned into a soap like substance but one that was more soluble in water especially hard water was the advent of detergents many of the things that we call soap today are actually detergents although most bar soap is still actually soap some of this is detergent also according to FDA rules it can't be sold as soap instead it'll be sold under a title of something like body bar soap has been with us for millennia but for much of that period it was used sparingly essentially a luxury item in the widespread use of soaps that we enjoyed today is a relatively recent phenomenon and if you're one of the millions who's just now learning how to properly wash your hands while singing the song happy birthday to you twice don't be too hard on yourself the development of guidelines for washing your hands is a very new phenomena it wasn't until foodborne illness outbreaks in the 1980s that the United States Centers for Disease Control created the world's first national hand hygiene guidelines [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause]

Channel: The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered

Views: 346,387

Keywords: history, the history guy, history guy, hygiene, soap

Id: aOL330lir9I

Length: 12min 53sec (773 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 30 2020