Asia China Bathing culture in
Chinese literature can be traced back to the
Shang dynasty (), when
oracle bone inscriptions describe people washing their hair and body in a bath. The
Book of Rites, a work regarding
Zhou dynasty () ritual, politics, and culture compiled during the
Warring States period, recommends that people take a hot shower every five days, and wash their hair every three days. It was also considered good manners to take a bath provided by the host before a
dinner. In the
Han dynasty, bathing became a regular activity, and for government officials bathing was required every five days. Ancient bath facilities have been found in ancient Chinese cities, such as Dongzhouyang archaeological site in
Henan Province. Bathrooms were called (), and bathtubs were made of bronze or timber. Bath beans – a powdery soap mixture of ground beans, cloves, eaglewood, flowers, and even powdered jade – were recorded in the Han dynasty. Bath beans were considered luxury toiletries, while common people simply used powdered beans without spices mixed in. Luxurious bathhouses built around hot springs were recorded in
Tang dynasty. Coal was so plentiful that Chinese people of every social class had bathrooms in their houses, and people took showers every day in the winter for enjoyment. A typical
Ming dynasty bathhouse had slabbed floors and brick domed ceilings. A huge boiler would be installed in the back of the house, connected with the bathing pool through a tunnel. Water could be pumped into the pool by
turning wheels attended by the staff. In the
Heian period (), houses of prominent families, such as the families of court nobles or samurai, had baths. The bath had lost its religious significance and instead became leisure. became (to bathe in a shallow wooden tub). In the 17th century, the first European visitors to Japan recorded the habit of daily baths in mixed sex groups.
Indian subcontinent The earliest written account of elaborate codes of hygiene can be found in several Hindu texts, such as the
Manusmriti and the
Vishnu Purana. Bathing is one of the five (daily duties) in Hinduism, and not performing it leads to sin, according to some scriptures.
Ayurveda is a system of medicine developed in ancient times that is still practiced in India, mostly combined with conventional Western medicine. Contemporary Ayurveda stresses a
sattvic diet and good digestion and
excretion. Hygiene measures include
oil pulling, and
tongue scraping. Detoxification also plays an important role.
Americas Mesoamerica from the Loubat collection, 1904
Spanish chronicles describe the bathing habits of the peoples of
Mesoamerica during and after the
conquest.
Bernal Díaz del Castillo describes
Moctezuma (the Mexica, or
Aztec,
emperor at the arrival of
Cortés) in his as being "...Very neat and cleanly, bathing every day each afternoon...". Bathing was not restricted to the elite, but was practiced by all people; the chronicler Tomás López Medel wrote after a journey to
Central America that " and the custom of washing oneself is so quotidian [common] amongst the Indians, both of cold and hot lands, as is eating, and this is done in fountains and rivers and other water to which they have access, without anything other than pure water..." The Mesoamerican bath, known as in
Spanish, from the Nahuatl word , a compound of ("steam") and ("house"), consists of a room, often in the form of a small dome, with an exterior firebox known as () that heats a small portion of the room's wall made of volcanic rocks; after this wall has been heated, water is poured on it to produce steam, an action known as . As the steam accumulates in the upper part of the room a person in charge uses a bough to direct the steam to the bathers who are lying on the ground, with which he later gives them a massage, then the bathers scrub themselves with a small flat river stone and finally the person in charge introduces buckets with water along with soap and grass used to rinse. This bath had also ritual importance, and was tied to the goddess
Toci; it is also therapeutic when medicinal herbs are used in the water for the . It is still used in
Mexico.
Europe Antiquity (
Thermae) in
Bath, England Regular bathing was a hallmark of
Roman civilization. Elaborate
baths were constructed in urban areas to serve the public, who typically demanded the infrastructure to maintain personal cleanliness. The complexes usually consisted of large, swimming pool-like baths, smaller cold and hot pools, saunas, and spa-like facilities where people could be depilated, oiled, and massaged. Water was constantly changed by an
aqueduct-fed flow. Bathing outside of urban centers involved smaller, less elaborate bathing facilities, or simply the use of clean bodies of water. Roman cities also had large
sewers, such as Rome's
Cloaca Maxima, into which public and private latrines drained. Romans did not have demand-flush toilets but did have some toilets with a continuous flow of water under them. The
Romans used
scented
oils (mostly from Egypt), among other alternatives.
Christianity has always placed a strong
emphasis on hygiene. Despite rejecting
mixed bathing,
early Christian clergy encouraged believers to bath, The Church built
public bathing facilities that were separated by sex near
monasteries and pilgrimage sites.
Middle Ages Contrary to popular belief,
bathing and
sanitation were not lost in Europe with the collapse of the
Roman Empire. Starting in the early Middle Ages,
popes situated baths within church
basilicas and monasteries.
Bidet and
bidet showers were used in regions where water was considered essential for
anal cleansing.
Public bathhouses were common in medieval
Christendom larger towns and cities such as
Constantinople,
Paris,
Regensburg,
Rome and
Naples. in
Thessaloniki In the 11th and 12th centuries, bathing was essential to the Western European upper class: the
Cluniac monasteries (popular centers for resorting and retiring) were always equipped with bathhouses. These baths were also used ritually when the monks took full immersion baths at the two Christian festivals of renewal. The rules of the
Augustinians and
Benedictines contained references to
ritual purification, and, inspired by
Benedict of Nursia, encouraged the practice of therapeutic bathing.
Benedictine monks also played a role in the development and promotion of
spas. On the other hand, bathing also sparked erotic phantasies, played upon by the writers of
romances intended for the upper class; in the tale of
Melusine the bath was a crucial element of the plot. Cities regulated public bathing – the 26 public baths of Paris in the late 13th century were strictly overseen by the civil authorities and guild laws banned prostitutes from bathhouse admission. In 14th century Tuscany, newlywed couples commonly took a bath together, as depicted in an illustration of this custom in a fresco in the town hall of San Gimignano. As evident in
Hans Folz'
Bath Booklet (a late 15th century guide on European baths) and various artistic depictions such as
Albrecht Dürer's ''Women's Bath'' , public bathing continued to be a popular past time in the
Renaissance. In Britain, the rise of
Protestantism also played a prominent role in the development of
spa culture. Modern sanitation was not widely adopted until the 19th and 20th centuries. According to medieval historian Lynn Thorndike, people in
Medieval Europe probably bathed more than people did in the 19th century. Some time after
Louis Pasteur's experiments proved the
germ theory of disease and
Joseph Lister and others put this into practice in
sanitation, hygienic practices came to be regarded as synonymous with
health, as they are in modern times. The importance of hand washing for human healthparticularly for people in vulnerable circumstances like mothers who had just given birth or wounded soldiers in hospitalswas first recognized in the mid 19th century by two pioneers of hand hygiene: the Hungarian physician
Ignaz Semmelweis who worked in Vienna, Austria, and
Florence Nightingale, the English "founder of modern nursing". At that time most people still believed that infections were caused by foul odors called
miasmas.
Middle East ,
Isfahan, Iran
Islam stresses the importance of cleanliness and personal hygiene.
Islamic hygienical jurisprudence, which dates back to the 7th century, has a number of elaborate rules. (ritual purity) involves performing (ablution) for the five daily (prayers), as well as regularly performing (bathing), which led to
bathhouses being built across the
Islamic world.
Islamic toilet hygiene also requires
washing with water after using the toilet, for purity and to minimize pathogens. In the
Abbasid Caliphate (8th–13th centuries), its capital city of
Baghdad (Iraq) had 65,000 baths, along with a sewer system. Cities and towns of the
medieval Islamic world had
water supply systems powered by
hydraulic technology that supplied
drinking water along with much greater quantities of water for ritual washing, mainly in
mosques and
hammams (baths). Bathing establishments in various cities were rated by Arabic writers in
travel guides. Medieval Islamic cities such as Baghdad,
Córdoba (
Islamic Spain),
Fez (Morocco), and
Fustat (Egypt) also had sophisticated
waste disposal and
sewage systems with interconnected networks of sewers. The city of Fustat also had multi-storey
tenement buildings (with up to six floors) with
flush toilets, which were connected to a water supply system, and
flues on each floor carrying waste to underground channels. A basic form of
contagion theory dates back to the Persian medicine in the medieval, where it was proposed by Persian physician
Ibn Sina (also known as Avicenna) in
The Canon of Medicine (1025), the most authoritative medical textbook of the Middle Ages. He mentioned that people can transmit disease to others by breath, noted contagion with
tuberculosis, and discussed the transmission of disease through water and dirt. The concept of invisible contagion was eventually widely accepted by
Islamic scholars. In the
Ayyubid Sultanate, they referred to them as ("impure substances"). The scholar
Ibn al-Haj al-Abdari (), while discussing
Islamic diet and hygiene, gave advice and warnings about how contagion can contaminate water, food, and garments, and could spread through the water supply. In the 9th century,
Ziryab invented a type of
deodorant. He also promoted morning and evening baths, and emphasized the maintenance of personal hygiene. Ziryab is thought to have invented a type of
toothpaste, which he popularized throughout
Islamic Iberia. The exact ingredients of this toothpaste are not known, but it was reported to have been both "functional and pleasant to taste." In
Southern Africa, the
Zulu people conducted methods of sanitation by using water stored in pottery at
Ulundi. The
Himba people of
Namibia and
Angola also utilized mixtures of smoke and
otjitze to treat skin diseases in regions where water is scarce.
Soap and soap makers in blocks of Hard toilet
soap with a pleasant smell was invented in the
Middle East during the
Islamic Golden Age when soap-making became an established industry. Recipes for soap-making are described by
Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi (), who also gave a recipe for producing
glycerine from
olive oil. In the Middle East, soap was produced from the interaction of fatty oils and
fats with
alkali. In
Syria, soap was produced using olive oil together with alkali and
lime. Soap was exported from Syria to other parts of the
Muslim world and to Europe. Two key Islamic innovations in
soapmaking was the invention of
bar soap, described by al-Razi, and the addition of
scents using
perfume technology perfected in the Islamic world. By the 15th century, the manufacture of soap in Christendom had become virtually industrialized, with sources in
Antwerp,
Castile,
Marseille,
Naples, and
Venice. In the 17th century the Spanish
Catholic manufacturers purchased the
monopoly on
Castile soap from the cash-strapped
Carolinian government. Industrially-manufactured bar soaps became available in the late 18th century, as advertising campaigns in Europe and America promoted popular awareness of the relationship between cleanliness and health. A major contribution of the
Christian missionaries in
Africa,
China,
Guatemala,
India,
Indonesia,
Korea, and other places was better
health care through hygiene and introducing and distributing soap, and "cleanliness and hygiene became an important marker of being identified as a Christian". ==Society and culture==