Posted by Caroline on July 09, 1997 at 14:13:25:
In reply to Hygiene... posted by La Dem on July 09, 1997 at 07:26:44
] I'm not sure if this topic has been posted before. Can any body give info on all aspects of "good" and bad hygiene during this period like bathing, masculine and feminine hygiene, et cetera?
] I've also wondered how women of the period dealt with "concealing" their menstrual cycles...
Rita has put up some links about bathing lower down which are interesting. I have loads of notes, too.So where do you want to start? I am going to say that I believe people were a lot cleaner than some people assume. They cleaned thier houses regularly,(sometimes excessively, almost) they kept thier clothes clean,they DID bathe, they did clean thier teeth,they had methods of dealing with fleas and other pests.(that topic could be quite gruesome, if you want to persue it!)They also complained if other people stank, though whether they were more tolerant of personal smells than we are today, I do not know.
As regards the menstrual thing, since there are several recipes and instructions in published books of the period about dealing with women's "courses", I would say that it was a topic about as freely talked about then as it is now.As to praticalities of dealing with it, I am not sure.Cloth, I suppose, and seclusion on the days when you are feeling rotten.
Where do we go from here?
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