Medieval Hygiene
by Emma Felling
Watch any tv series or film depicting medieval people and it’s almost guaranteed to portray them as filthy and stinking, surrounded by rotten waste products. In reality, they understood far more than we give them credit for; they just tried to make it work with what they already believed. Take medieval physicians for example. They believed that God gave humans a well-balanced body. In order to stay balanced, the body needed to rid itself of any excess. It did this by purging faeces, urine, vomit, mucus, spit, sweat, gas, breath, and even hair and blood. A sick person produces more of these excretions and those that handled them, or smelled them, also tended to get sick. And what was the best way of removing them? Through personal hygiene practices.
Bathing, medieval style
Keeping clean
How medieval people washed and groomed themselves depended on social status and wealth. Everyone was expected to ‘top and tail’ (the face, underarms, and nether regions) at least once a day. For the poor, or those living in the countryside, it could be a simple wipe down at a horse trough with a wet rag or a ‘dunking’ in a nearby source of water.
If they had the coin, or the time to spare, jugs, hot water and bowls. Or, if they also lived in a town and weren’t shy, they could visit bath houses. There, everyone got undressed and bathed together. Medieval people were more comfortable with nudity in certain situations. While bathing, medieval people would gossip, play games, eat and drink. It was their version of going to the pub! The bathing itself consisted of washing the body with sweet smelling oils, or if they could afford it, tallow soap.
If they had lots of money, or say, were a Lord or Lady in a castle, they’d ‘top and tail’ at least twice a day. Perhaps more. They might also have their own bathtub in which they’d bathe with the finest oils and the most expensive soap made from olive oil, aka castile soap. And like in the bath house, there was no privacy. The bathing person may do business, eat, drink, or talk to their friends!
Medieval people also cleaned their teeth! For those in the countryside, fresh hazel twigs made great toothbrushes, becoming brush-like after the end is chewed. For everyone else, they’d wipe their teeth with a linen cloth. There was no toothpaste. Instead, people were encouraged to use sea salt and ground herbs – cloves being a favourite. Cloves could also be steeped to make a mouthwash and are so affective, the oil is still used in dental treatment today! Toothpicks have also been found.
A late medieval comb
Combs were used by everyone to brush out their hair and remove parasites. A simple comb was cheap or could be whittled by most people. Fancier combs were two-sided. One with wide teeth, the other with finer teeth. While the latter could be used as a nit-comb, it was also used for cleaning the hair. It got right into the scalp, removing dirt and distributing the hair’s oils to keep it healthy. That fluff you see in your brush? That’s actually the dirt from your scalp.
People did wash their hair, though doctors advised not to do it too often, for fear of catching a cold. Lords and Ladies even paid others to wash their hair for them. In between washes, perfumed oils kept the hair from smelling bad, and flax seed oil worked as a hair gel.
Other tools medieval people used to keep clean include ear scoops for removing earwax, razors for shaving, tweezers, tools for the nails and small, hand-held mirrors. Some, like mirrors were almost exclusively used by those with money or inherited. Other items were made in a variety of materials to suite every person’s budget.
Clothing (and lice!)
What medieval people wore also helped them stay clean. Regularly changing and washing of clothing that came in close contact to their skin removed the stinky dirt their bodies produced.
Most everyone had access to two types of fabric they could use for this job. Wool and Linen. While wool is a great hardy fabric, in that dried mud can simply be brushed off, it is very difficult to wash. It grows heavy when wet and can easily become misshapen, plus the colour fades quickly. Linen on the other hand, was tough, light and absorbed sweat. Even better, it would soften over time and was considerably cheaper. So linen was chosen as the perfect hygienic underwear, with wool worn on top. While the poorest may only have one wool outfit, they would at least have one change of underclothes. Of course, the rich lords and ladies would have several fresh undergarments. They also chose to sleep naked between linen bedsheets that were regularly changed for the same reason.
Today we associate lice and fleas with dirt. Medieval people were no different, except for one small detail. They thought lice, fleas, and other parasites spontaneously generated from dirt. Outside of washing themselves, repellents such as lavender flowers and cedarwood were often worn to encourage those ‘newly formed’ pests to depart or choose a new host. Measures were also taken to keep them from lingering in unworn clothing. For most people, this involved hanging unused garments close to their smoky fire or packing them between the repellents they wore. Those with money, or living in a castle, had the luxury of hanging their garments in indoor toilets. Not even fleas like those smells! Such toilets were quickly dubbed garderobes (‘guard-robes’).
Good table manners at a medieval dinner.
Good manners
And if all that wasn’t enough, Medieval people were also expected to behave in ways that we today consider hygienic. Some they may have considered acts of cleanliness; others may have simply created that ‘eww gross’ feeling we all get when we see certain behaviours. Etiquette guides from the period told people to:-
· Wash their hands prior to and after meals.
· Not return food that they’ve touched to shared dishes.
· Not touching their nose or ears during mealtimes.
· Swallow any food still in their mouth before drinking from a shared cup.
But this behaviour wasn’t just limited to the lords and ladies. Sadly, one town’s death records detailed the drowning of a young boy in a water trough. He fell in while trying to wash his hands and dish after his meal.
Cleanliness is next to Godliness?
So where did the idea that medieval people were filthy come from?
The overly zealous Christians of their time. Some thought that washing was an excessive worldly act that encouraged sinful pride. Others chose to remain unclean and suffer all that goes with it (parasites, itchiness, infections) as a form of religious discipline. For example, upon Thomas Beckett’s death, monks found his undergarments utterly infested with fleas and lice! Such suffering was recorded in church manuscripts which were often the first or only sources early (Victorian) historians and archeologists drew from. It is thanks to the diligent work of modern historians and archaeologists that we can paint a more correct picture of medieval personal hygiene practices!
Sources
Adapted from: https://www.emmafelling.com/blog/to-stink-or-not-to-stink
‘A review on uses of clove in oral and general health’, (2014) M. Agrawal et al., Indian Journal of Research in Pharmacy and Biotechnology [Online] https://www.ijrpb.com/issues/Volume%202_Issue%204/ijrpb%202(4)%2016%20Mayank%20Agarwal%201321-1324.pdf
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‘Face-Framing Braids—Recreating a 14th-Century Hairstyle’ (2018) Tasha Kelley [Online] https://cottesimple.com/hairstyles/14th-century-braids/
‘Medieval Hygiene’ (2018) Mark Cartwright, World History Enyclopedia [Online] https://www.worldhistory.org/Medieval_Hygiene/
‘Mistress, Maids and Men: Baronial Life in the Thirteenth Century’ (2003) Margaret Wade Labarge.
‘The (not so) stinky Middle Ages: why medieval people were cleaner than we think’ (2020) BBC History [Online] https://www.historyextra.com/period/medieval/did-medieval-people-take-baths-why-they-were-cleaner-than-we-think-middle-ages-hygiene-handwash-washing-cleanliness-coronavirus-plague-covid/
‘The Good Wife’s Guide Le Ménagir de Paris: A Medieval Household Book’ (2009) translated by Gina L. Greco and Christine M. Rose
‘The Very Secret Sex Lives of Medieval Women’ (2020) Rosalie Gilbert.
Video: ‘Medieval hygiene: Did people have bad teeth in medieval times?’ (2019) Jason Kingsley, Modern History TV [Online] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcVwcvWePhU
Video: ‘Soap and washing: Did they have soap in medieval times?’ (2019) Jason Kingsley, Modern History TV, [Online] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j30HOdWJ5gE