Here are 7 gross and surprising hygiene practices from history.
1. Childbirth
Potions advocated for childbirth in the middle ages included rubbing the flanks of the expectant mother with rose oil, giving her vinegar and sugar to drink, or applying poultices of ivory or eagle’s dung (all meant to ease their pain).
2. Baldness
The Ebers Papyrus, a medical text that dates back to 1550 B.C., offers a number of recommended cures for ancient Egyptians suffering from hair loss. Suggestions include a mixture of fats from a hippopotamus, crocodile, tomcat, snake and ibex; porcupine hair boiled in water and applied to the scalp for four days; and the leg of a female greyhound sautéed in oil with the hoof of a donkey.
3. Wiping
Back then in ancient Europe, If you were a king, you didn’t wipe by yourself. Kings typically had a “Groom of Stool”. Whose job was to carry around the king’s portable toilet and cleaning necessities and also help wipe him.
surprisingly, it was the sons of noblemen or members of the gentry that were usually awarded the job.
4. Surgery
Before surgery, wounds are washed using either the surgeons urine or the sick person’s. It all depends on who had pee in his bladded at that point in time. It was also used in sterilizing surgical equipments.
5. Makeup
In their bid to cover unsightly blemishes and scars, women during the Victorian Era applied lead powder to their faces. Not surprisingly, this lead to many sicknesses.
6. Bathing
In medieval europe, When it was learned that public bathing was responsible for most of the disease that were going around,
Members of the upper classes, rather than completely forgo bathing, tended to cut down their full body bathing habits down to around a few times per year, striking a balance between risk of acquiring a disease from the bath vs. body stench.
7. Bathroom Break
A chamber pot a potty pot is a bowl-shaped container with a handle, and often a lid, kept in the bedroom under a bed and mostly used in the middle of the night to pee and poo.
And here’s the grossest part, after use, It is stashed right back under the bed. Notwithstanding the smell.
EXTRA
Face washing
Nobility often washed their face everyday with urine to tackle freckles and blemishes. it is still suggested by some people today as a face wash.
