Dr Kat and Our Filthy Ancestors?

hello and welcome back to the channel if you're new here hi you're very welcome this is reading the past and I'm dr. Kat and we are living through a moment of history aren't we it's certainly unprecedented at least within many people's living memory and first and foremost I just want to say that I hope that everybody watching this is keeping well and that everyone you care about stays healthy if you are self isolating or socially distancing then I hope you're taking good care of your mental health that you're finding meaningful ways to remain connected to those that you love and that you are staying as positive as possible if you're somebody who can't self isolate or socially distance perhaps because you are one of our frontline key workers then all I can say is thank you for everything that you're doing in this incredibly difficult time and I firmly hope that your employers and your governments are doing everything in their power to keep you and your loved ones safe it's perhaps unsurprising during this particular moment that I find myself thinking more and more about hygiene and cleanliness and when something preoccupies me I find ways to contextualize it within my knowledge of the past and that brings me comfort I'm hoping it might do the same for you when we look at representations of history on our screens whether they are factual fictional or even comical or too often we are confronted by a cast of background actors smeared in dirt hands and faces filthy almost like they've been bathed in mud teeth blackened out to show they've never been cleaned hair greasy matted and uncombed of course the exception is the leading roles within these representations particularly if they are Hollywood performers in their case there is not one speck of mud on their face or hands their hair is perfectly quaffed and their teeth or too often are veneers neither one of these representations is of course historically accurate I think in the case of the former the lesion of background fills the actors it gives truth to the lie or at least perhaps the misinformation but people in the past were filthy smelly and disgusting that they hardly ever bathed or in fact never bathed at all that if we as modern people were to travel back in time we would step out of a time machine and the smell of human bodies would be so disgusting to us that we wouldn't be able to cope it would be an assault on the nasal cavity and with all cliches there is of course an element of truth but when it comes to the past I think it's always a little bit more complicated and layered than it first appears and so today I want to talk about the ideals and standards of cleanliness and hygiene that were enforced on our ancestors and how they try to maintain them let's go [Music] [Music] so I'm not sure what happens in the rest of the world but I grew up in the 1990s and I attended a British primary school during that period and if you did too then I have no doubt that you spent quite a lot of memorable time learning all about the Roman occupation of Britain as far as I remember we tried on togas we designed and even created our own mosaics for the floors of our imaginary villas I also definite a stuffed date covered in honey but the overriding memory I had was learning all about how when the Romans came here they brought with them technology and innovation that had never been seen in this land before we were taught about how aqueducts would piped water from fresh streams into the new villages and cities places where Roman villas had underfloor heating and where both houses were an absolutely vital part of the community in romano-british life we were told bathing was key if you're in the United Kingdom or indeed making a plan to come here then you can take a trip to Bath where you will find a reconstructed survival from this Roman period there was no aqueduct in use here because this Roman bath was placed on the site of a hot spring like its counterparts all across the Roman Empire this bathhouse performed a spiritual function as well as being a place where health could be obtained bathing could take place and people could socialize with friends and family romano-british life would come to an end as the Roman Empire began to contract and eventually fell and as late as the 19th century it was believed at least by some historians that this meant that bathing went away - and I hate to correct for a historian but this is patently not true indeed we need only look at the illuminations in medieval manuscripts to see that bathing was very much part of the cultural zeitgeist as it had been in the romano-british period bathing was clearly a social and spiritual requirement during the medieval period as well the Rite of baptism for infants is a spiritual bath the child is submerged in water washing away their sins and indeed there'll be more ritual bathing if a young man was deemed fit to be knighted bathing would be a big part of the procedure he underwent to become a knight the very wealthy who wish to maintain their place in the world would be lucky enough to have their own baths in their homes these wooden barrels as they would have been would have been lined with linen to avoid leakage usually placed before an open fire they would be filled with warm scented water by the servants of the household and a person could submerge within it it was a laborious process it certainly wasn't something that everybody could afford to do but it probably almost certainly wouldn't have been done daily maybe not even weekly but private bathing was available however bathing was also a social activity in medieval England and just as in Roman Britain public baths were the order of the day European Crusaders returning from battles in the Holy Land have been credited with the reintroduction of these public baths in their home nations unlike the Roman version these were mixed sex Affairs if you were in London and going in search for bathhouse then the prime real estate would be south of the river in Southwark across the medieval period these bath houses became known as bad Neos or stews and increasingly became linked with sex workers as the medieval period moved on the men and women that spent their time in the stews of Southwark may simply be going there to bathe their bodies perhaps to socialize maybe they were attempting to improve their health but there would always be a question were they actually going there to sex work were they sex workers themselves or their clientele in addition to the potential moral implications connected to public bathing it's worth mentioning that bathing itself whether public or private was potentially a health concern I've made a video on the notion of the four humors and I will leave that linked in a card up here before humours and it's connected theory of miasma namely bad air the notion that bad smells or bad air could make a person physically sick meant that bathing could be dangerous submerging one's body into warm or even hot water was risky it was thought this would open up the pores these open pores were then portals to the body system into which miasma could potentially enter and cause untold chaos to body mind and potentially soul bathing therefore had to be approached with care in the run-up to going for a bath you should make sure that you were not passing either abstinence or excess in for example eating or even having sex because in both cases it might be dangerous body system to then undergo the process of bathing in the aftermath of bathing when your pores were still open you also of course had to take care you should perhaps they wrapped in your linens before a fire between sure that your pores could close down before you re entered society and the dangers of the world as the medieval period gave ways the early modern era in England it looked like the stews of Southwark and the bath houses of England were having their last hurrah they were under threat perhaps due to this fear of miasma maybe because increasingly these were seen as sites of sex work could it have been the case of syphilis or the French pops were on the rise and it was being tied to the bathhouses maybe it was just a general moral panic or indeed all of the above but regardless in 1546 Henry the Eighth issued a ban on public mixed sex bathing I am prepared to consider an argument that submerging one's whole body in water was a slightly more fraught proposition in Tudor England than it was in the medieval period but that doesn't mean it didn't happen because it certainly did people swim in streams ponds and rivers the elite members of society were lucky enough to be able to afford their own bathtubs as they had in medieval elite homes and they almost certainly would have used them they probably wouldn't use them daily in fact almost certainly wouldn't have maybe not even weekly or monthly but that doesn't mean they were dirty because there are alternatives for keeping yourself clean that don't involve submerging yourself fully in warm or even cold water take for example this basin and ewer and here is a particularly fine example but presumably there could be some that were slightly more affordable this jug could be filled with heated and maybe for the very lucky even perfumed water it could be used daily by some if not all to wash their face and hands when they woke up it would be used perhaps at meal times to wash the hands before you began eating maybe it could even be used to wash hair although this would have happened much less regularly linen was a vital material in maintaining a pleasant body odor but also in the early modern mind physical health the very wealthy would have multiple linen undergarments and they could change them many many times a day they may not wash their outer clothes but if you are changing your linens two three four times a day then it's not going to get a chance to smell and therefore nor is your body they would sleep on linen sheets that could be regularly washed and they would use linen cloth to rub down their skin and hair absorbing any oil and for the skin any dead skin cells linen is a highly absorbent fabric and in the early modern mindset thinking about humoral Theory they also believed that it would suck out and absorb any bad humors keeping them away from the internal workings of the body wearing linen sleeping even and robbing your body with linen was a way of keeping yourself clean and physically healthy if body odor still remained a problem then it could always be masked with perfume scented oils or scented waters could be used to cover body odor equally you could also carry a per Mandor and these might take many forms some were beautifully and ornately decorated and they would be filled with dried flowers herbs and spices so you'll be carrying around something that smelled beautiful also you're walking through an unpleasant part of your town or city and bad smells started to assail you those dangerous my asthma's that could make you sick well then your commander or your perfume would protect you if you smelt something beautiful it was enough to block out those bad smells than miasma and they couldn't get into your body they thought you would remain healthy by having these beautiful smells around you to ensure that your hair wasn't smelly greasy and unkept perhaps you would submerge it in your bathtub if you were lucky enough to have one maybe you would wash it in that basin and ewer as I mentioned perhaps you'd make do with rubbing it down with linen maybe you would do all of the above at some point perhaps you'd keep away smells with that perfumed water or perfumed oil and to keep it from looking unkempt you would comb it there were lice combs and more regular combs to keep the hair looking lovely and lady's hair would be incredibly long and therefore theoretically harder to maintain it is said that amber Lynn's hair famously was so long she could sit on it so how didn't it look horribly dirty with it not being washed at least once a week well ladies had their hair plaited up bound and then placed under a coif and then a hood it was not on display to the elements when they slept they'd sleep with it in a cap as well so the hair isn't coming into contact with things it's going to make it particularly dirty all that you have to deal with is if you potentially have an oily scalp increasingly today we have people who are doing the no poo method so they're going away from using shampoo and their hair looks lovely it takes a while to get through that oily phase but that is because we have become so used to the shampoos and the heavy chemicals in them that our hair doesn't quite know how to cope so arguably if you've never used soap or shampoo on your hair you perhaps aren't dealing with the level of grease that we consider you would deal with if you didn't wash your hair at least once a week perhaps that's something to bear in mind I'd like to remain with Amber Leighton for one moment and take a look at this object because I think it speaks volumes how important the notion of personal hygiene was in henrician England this item is said to be a gift perhaps the first gift from Henry the 8th to amberlynn during their courtship it is a whistle in the shape of a pistol also attached is an ear scoop for removing earwax a toothpick and something to clean under your nails it is designed to be worn as a pendant so this is not a private item is meant for public display it is a beautiful gilded item of jewelry whose express purpose as well as being lovely is for personal hygiene although I like to believe Henry the 8th did give this object to amberlynn even if he didn't the very fact that it exists this expensive elaborately produced object whose really sole function apart from being for display is personal hygiene to me speaks volumes if hygiene wasn't important to our ancestors why on earth would this item even exist there's one aspect from what I like to call the televisual myth-making surrounding historical hygiene that I haven't spoken about yet and that's the sea of extras with their black teeth however whenever I see it on-screen it's usually the medieval peasant that has the black teeth and in excavations of various grave sites of medieval bodies that certainly seems to be a lie they may have ground down teeth because of the roughage they're eating but to all intents and purposes the teeth seem to be in pretty good condition there might be some plaque or tartar there but not heavy amounts of decay and certainly not blackened teeth nevertheless as the period moves on certainly black teeth rotten teeth reports in the Bills of mortality of death from teeth does seem to be an ever increasing phenomenon and according to historians archaeologists and scientists the prime culprit for that increase across all walks SIA T certainly as the period gets later and later is the increasing prominence and prevalence of sugar in English society we know that sugar is highly addictive we also know that it's not great for your teeth but what I must say from the research that I've conducted is that it's quite tragic because it's not a lack of Hygiene in attempting to deal with the after-effects of the consumption of sugar that creates the problem rather it seems it's because they're trying to be hygienic the things they are using to try and deal with tooth pain tooth decay and tooth staining seem to be things that would absolutely exacerbate the problem the most benign tool perhaps is the cloth they would use to rub their teeth with but there was also the twig that they would make into a form of a toothbrush and they would use that to clean their teeth I can't imagine this very delicate or gentle on the gums and if it does cause damage the gums perhaps caused them to recede then that puts the more delicate part of the tooth on display the part without the enamel and therefore cavities can take hold herbal mixtures could also be rubbed into the gums perhaps they would contain sage that was particularly popular maybe if there was pain in the teeth they might also use clothes but this would be suspended sometimes in alcohol sometimes in sugar or honey so you're trying to brush your teeth with the very thing that is potentially creating the cavity if you're trying to deal with if you notice staining on your teeth and wanted to treat that well then you wring from even worse time because what was an offer was something that was incredibly abrasive a variety of substances might be used brick dust or pumice being just some of them these abrasive substances would strip away the tooth enamel leaving them incredibly vulnerable to decay and infection and with decay infection and gum disease comes bad breath and the treatment for that was something called kissing comforts these were sugared lozenges which were flavored with some sort of perfume but as I said they're sugar so in trying to treat bad breath you're putting in more sugar that's going to create more decay so while their attempts to clean teeth remove stains and deal with bad breath seems utterly illogical to us evidently what they're doing is going to make the situation ten times worse in terms of decay and bad breath what these attempts show us is that they care they care how they smell they care their teeth look clean hygiene cleanliness is important the fact they're going about it in the wrong way doesn't mean that it had the same Drive that we do and if they care this much then surely the way their body smell was something that concerned them so I wonder how smelly they actually would have been but I'd love to know what you think of this video and of the points that I've made within it so let me know in the comments section or you can come and find me over on my social media as always I'll be leaving links to my Instagram and Twitter in the description box you can follow me there and we can continue this conversation I hope you've enjoyed this video and found it useful if you did then please let me know by hitting the thumbs up please also subscribe to this channel and while you're there hit the notification bell next subscribe button so that YouTube tells you when I've next uploaded I hope you're going to have a great day whatever you're doing and now more than ever that you are staying well healthy and happy I look forward to speaking to you in my next video do take care of yourselves bye bye for now [Music] [Music]

Channel: Reading the Past

Views: 62,176

Rating: 4.9617929 out of 5

Keywords: Health, Hygiene, Cleanliness, Public Bathing, Education, Literature, Culture, History, Renaissance, Roman Britain, Medieval, Early Modern

Id: bBkIwjOl8bY

Length: 20min 39sec (1239 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 20 2020