Ten facts about dirt and cleanliness you may not have known:
1. People rarely used soap to wash their bodies until the late 19th century. It was usually made from animal fats and ashes and was too harsh for bodies; the gentler alternative, made with olive oil, was too expensive for most people.
2. The accumulated sweat, dirt and oil that a famous athlete or gladiator scraped off himself was sold to their fans in small vials. Roman women reportedly used it as a face cream.
3. Recycling saintly secretions: St. Lutgard’s saliva was believed to heal the sick, as were the crumbs chewed by another medieval saint, St. Colette. A man sent from England to the Netherlands for St. Lidwina’s washing water, to apply to his afflicted leg. The water from St. Eustadiola’s face- and hand-washing cured blindness and other illnesses.
4. Teeth were cleaned in the middle ages and the Renaissance with green hazel twigs and woollen cloths.
5. Austrian peasant men courted by secreting a handkerchief in their armpits during a dance. When it was sufficiently sweaty, they wiped the face of their chosen girl with it – according to folk belief, she would be instantly smitten.
6. 16th century French deodorant: “To cure the goat-like stench of armpits, it is useful to press and rub the skin with a compound of roses.”
7. When John Wesley, the 18th-century founder of Methodism, coined the phrase, “Cleanliness is next to godliness,” he was referring to clean clothes, not bodies.
8. Listerine was invented as a surgical antiseptic and, without changing its formula, morphed over 40 years into an oral antiseptic, astringent and astonishingly successful mouthwash.
9. Kotex sanitary napkins began life as wood-fibre bandages for soldiers in World War One. The battlefield nurses used them as sanitary pads.
10. In 1931, halitosis was cited as grounds for divorce.
Excerpted from The Dirt on Clean by Katherine Ashenburg Copyright © 2007 by Katherine Ashenburg. Excerpted by permission of Knopf Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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