Neat! Say, when did surgeons start washing their hands? Look it up ;)
this post was submitted on 15 Feb 2025
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Explanation: While medieval hygiene was far from great by modern standards, especially amongst the non-elite, it was about normal for pre-modern societies. People took baths - if not always in tubs, then at least in the local rivers and streams. The 'medieval people didn't bathe' myth is actually more accurate to the Renaissance period, when a mixture of urban culture in bath-houses making them suspected as places of 'sin', and a strange variation of miasma ('bad smell') theory caused ~150-200 years of anti-bathing sentiment. Bathing never entirely went away, but became less popular.
Miasma theory was normally used to encourage cleanliness, but in the Renaissance, a prominent variation of the theory was used to discourage bathing - as bathing would open up the pores of the skin, and let the 'bad air' in to the body. As long as the 'miasma' was on the outside, it was safe!
The "ill repute" of bath houses wasn't entirely undeserved. One factor that made people shun them in the early modern period was also the spread of syphilis which you could easily get from visiting a bath house of ill repute. Also, wood was getting more scarce due to wide spread deforestation. And that bath houses needed a lot of wood.
Don't let the bad air in through tiny fucking skin holes!
Multiple much larger holes on face sucking in "miasma" every few seconds to live:
I'm going to divorce my wife so that I can start dating again, just to ask their opinions on miasma during first dates.
Perhaps, but definitely there was poor public sanitation simply because of lack of knowledge. Cholera was epidemic because people would throw their crap outside their homes or just about anywhere they like. Cholera is not common anymore thanks to 19th century science that studied why the disease persisted.
Pug out here ignoring the historical documentaries we have
'e's the only one who hasn't got shit on him
We're supposed to take bathing info from a pug? Don't you guys go for the "licking things clean" method of washing?
Without assistants with opposable thumbs, how would a pug clean their own head wrinkles? My child, I tell you the truth; no pug is an island! ✋
But you can manage your balls on your own, I hope.
I wish I could; I woke up one day and they were missing 😔
Oops. Have you checked the abandoned road tunnel near you that has a witch living in it?
My favorite example is when I talk about medieval hygiene and someone replies: "but yes, they were dirty in the Middle Ages, look at the French king Louis XIV for example, he never took a bath willingly for his all life". And then I look at them with a look that is both dejected and tired and I wait to see if they understands on their own.
I feel like the cross section of "people who knew King Louis XIV refused to take baths" and "people who don't know even approximately when Louis XIV ruled" would be relatively small. Is that not the case?
Apparently not, at least not in France.
But it's something I saw with a lot of subject: as soon as something bad occurred before the 19th century, it's in the Middle Ages in the mind of most people.
That would require them to know when Loyis XIV ruled and when the Medieval period was. The former is unlikely for most and the latter depends on when/where they were educated as no one used "Medieval" around me in college in the 1990s.
I'm French, so the fact that Louis XIV isn't a medieval king should be common knowledge. And the Middle Ages are taught in the CM1 (9-10 years old children) and 5e (13-14 years old) in history classes; and it's mentioned in French, art history, … thorough school.
If you are in France that's an appropriate reaction but outside of it that would be downright silly to expect people to know.
Lemmy gets it; on BlueSky there were far too many people being all "but they were dirty tho" when they're really just mixing it up with Late Renaissance / Early Industrial. London was practically unlivable!
At least into the early modern period they restored the understanding that cleanliness was good, just had a harder time achieving it XD
Me, seeing this saying "medieval people" and realizing it means "a slice of the world's population that lived in this (probably western European), but I guess fuck the rest and they don't count"
'Medieval' to refer to societies outside of Europe remains a very contested usage.
Fair point, but that doesn't stop people using "bronze age" and others (often forgetting that the chacolithic is even a thing) within Europe and a bit beyond without acknowledging that the dates for that (and the "iron age" for that matter) can vary a great deal.
"Bronze Age" and "Iron Age" are not regional in the same way that "Medieval" is. They can be used as global or developmental terms (ie 'The Bronze Age world', or 'A Bronze Age society'), but medieval, by contrast, refers to a specific period of time, and, by origin and usage, generally a specific region - Europe. It would be like complaining that Italy is never mentioned as being part of the Sengoku Jidai in the 15th and 16th centuries AD.
Correct me if im wrong, but what you have to think about is the pest. It was so deadly, because the hygiene (in terms of the streets) was terrible causing massive rat populations and therefore spreading the disease.
That's more about trash disposal than personal hygiene, though.
Hygiene of the streets/city is called sanitation.