According to Dr. Joshua Zeichner, assistant professor of dermatology at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, how frequently we shower and what we perceive as body odor is “really more of a cultural phenomenon.” Boston dermatologist Dr. Ranella Hirsch echoes this sentiment. “We overbathe in this country and that’s really important to realize,” she says. “A lot of the reason we do it is because of societal norms.”
And those norms are mainly the result of good advertising. …
Zeichner and Hirsch say that showering too often (particularly in hot water) can dry out and irritate skin, wash away the good bacteria that naturally exists on your skin, and introduce small cracks that put you at a higher risk of infection.
… you can probably skip the daily shower and take one every two to three days.
Not to mention pumping and hauling water and cutting firewood.
I thought they were reluctant to bathe because of that ‘witches float’ thing. 
Yeah, I’ve heard that before, but if I work up a sweat after a workout, or just from being outside in the summer (which happens a good six days a week), I wanna wash that skank away. And I especially don’t wanna sleep in it. If that’s just cultural, well, i guess I’m a water-waster then.
It’s an interesting and unique take on the time travel theme; usually we think “What would someone from my culture from the past think of life today?”, or, “What would happen if we traveled back in time in our own culture?”. This double-whammy of time displacement and cultural difference is unusual.
I was going to go with urine, P. P…
I think I’ve heard this story in relation to Versailles. It was apparently pretty overcrowded with nobles and didn’t really have facilities as such. Again, not sure how accurate this is. They would still have the occasional plague epidemic in those days, but the spread of plague relates to rat populations not personal hygiene. Rat fleas don’t like to bite humans but they will jump on us by accident if we happen by at the wrong time.
Not everyone in Europe bathes daily NOW. It’s not actually necessary.
Haiculo…
“Who’s that?”
“I dunno. Must be a king.”
“Why?”
“He hasn’t got shit all over him.”
(Yeah I know, wrong image. It’s the ‘bring out your dead’ guy who said that.)
So, where did the phrase “tossing the baby out with the bathwater” come from?
Whitlock had hoped that he would naturally acquire this type of bacteria simply by stopping washing. He didn’t – and grew quite pongy. So, he harvested bacteria from the soil at a local farm and fed them with ammonia and minerals. When they turned the ammonia into nitrate, he knew he had what he wanted and started narrowing them down to a single strain that seemed happiest on human skin. After he applied the bacteria he had cultured – the stuff the horses were apparently after – he stopped smelling.
Specifically, the late empire, when the peasentry were selling themselves into slavery because of the way that agriculture was becoming dominated by large, wealty farmers.
Right.
Also - I was a kid in the 70’s when we had a big drought in CA. Part of the water saving effort supposedly was to not flush “liquid waste”. Even as a kid, I was like “No, sorry. I’m flushing the toilet”.
My parents were on board with that. My grandparents on the other hand, who grew up during the depression and were not and would get pretty bent if we were at their house and flushed.
Huh, I guess we differ on that one. I’m fine with letting yellow mellow (but brown? yeah, flush it down!).
I need to see if I can track that down.
Science assures us it’s sterile.
Because of course it has. Whenever someone drops the soap, the invisible hand helps.
… but apparently it does stain.
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