TW: Economist is behind a firewall now, but their end of year piece on the evolution of personal hygiene was a nice reminder that the good, old days were perhaps not only not so good but most definitely not particularly well scented...
From Economist:
"...young Louis XIII, born in 1601, was not given a bath until he was almost seven. Throughout the 17th century, writes Georges Vigarello, in “Le Propre et le Sale”, it was thought that linen had special properties that enabled it to absorb sweat from the body. For gentlemen, a wardrobe full of fine linen smocks or undershirts to enable a daily change was the height of hygienic sophistication. Racine and Molière owned 30 each.
Indeed, bathing, certainly in hot water, was considered a veritable health risk. France’s Henri IV was famously filthy, “stinking of sweat, stables, feet and garlic”. Upon learning that the Duc de Sully had taken a bath, the king turned to his own physician, André du Laurens, for advice. The king was told that the poor man would be vulnerable for days. So a message was dispatched informing Sully that he was not to go out, or he would endanger his health. Instead, he was told, the king would visit his Paris home: “so that you come to no harm as a result of your recent bath.”
In England, Elizabeth I bathed only once a month and James I, her successor, seems to have washed only his fingers. One medical pamphlet printed at the time by Thomas Moulton, a doctor of divinity and Dominican friar, advises particular caution during outbreaks of the plague: “use no baths or stoves; nor swet not too much, for all openeth the pores of a manne’s body and maketh the venomous ayre to enter and for to infecte the bloude...”
TW: The other point being the accepted "experts" and mores at the time were in fact completely foolish.
http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15108662
No comments:
Post a Comment