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Were People of the Past Terribly Stinky?
Is our idea of cleanliness and hygiene all wrong? I did the research and a personal experiment to see.
When people think about the past, particularly the so-called “middle ages” of Europe, they have a very strong picture of people who we miserable, ill-educated, and of course, filthy. Most modern people can’t imagine skipping a shower for more than a day or two without developing a socially unacceptable odor, so obviously, these people who we assume never bathed at all must have reeked like an open sewer, right?
Well, no. The way we frame history often has to do with our perception of ourselves as modern people and the assumption that we do things better than anyone who has come before. Public sanitation became a major issue as cities exploded in size in Europe in the mid-16th century, though there were still laws that dictated things like waste disposal. However, this was not the middle ages. That was when the renaissance was sweeping Europe.
Cities were smaller affairs in earlier eras and finding clean water or places to dispose of waster was easier in the agricultural communities where many people resided. Besides that, primary sources have shown that most medieval people bathed regularly. Though, probably not as regularly as modern people would consider…
