How often did people bathe in the Middle Ages? How they used to wash in a Russian oven and where the custom came from

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In ancient Rus', special attention was paid to the construction of baths, since keeping the body clean was considered the main factor influencing human health. For some, building a bathhouse turned out to be too expensive, which, however, did not stop people from looking for other methods of cleansing - for example, washing in stoves.

Washing in a Russian oven seems to modern people something completely impossible and unrealistic. For some, such a procedure is just another tradition that has grown rather into a legend, but for representatives of the older generation, such stories are not fiction at all, but quite obvious childhood memories.

Where did the custom come from?

Even in ancient times, Russian people understood that cleanliness is the key to health, and they tried to observe its manifestations in everything: in everyday life, in clothing and, most importantly, in taking care of their own body. No wonder ancient Rus' were not affected by the numerous diseases that raged in Europe and were caused, first of all, by a complete lack of personal hygiene and unsanitary living conditions. Travelers visiting our country often noted that the inhabitants of Russian settlements look completely different: fresh clothes, clean hair and a washed face. This is not surprising, because in Rus' at that time only the lazy could not wash.

Antique stove from 1890

Baths were a mandatory attribute of ancient Russian settlements. If the family did not have enough strength or funds to build a bathhouse, water procedures were carried out in stoves.

It is difficult to establish where exactly the custom of washing in the stove began. Different parts of Russia have preserved evidence of the use of this method since the 15th century.

This tradition extended not only to villagers, but also to city dwellers, since the stove was the only means of heating the premises. According to ethnographers, the custom of washing in the stove survived among some population groups until the 20th century.

How did you wash before?

The internal structure of the Russian stove provides for long-term heat retention inside its furnace, especially if, after firing, the vent is closed with a damper. This design allows not only to maintain the temperature in the room, but also to keep heated water and food placed in it warm. The nuance of maintaining the water temperature is very important, since they usually “started” the stove in the morning, and washed after all the preparations, in the late afternoon.

Old Russian stoves are massive in size; two adults could easily sit inside the stove while doing water procedures. There was still space left for two pots and a broom.

After the day's preparations were completed, the stove was cleaned of ash, soot and soot. Before washing, the surface on which they climbed was covered with straw or small planks, so as not to get dirty on the way back. After all the actions, the laundering process itself began.

In the oven washed old people, small children or infants. In short, those who, due to circumstances, could not get to the bathhouse or were not in good enough health. Sick family members were also not taken to the bathhouse, especially in winter - they were washed in the stove. Small children were “transferred” to the oven on a special shovel, where one of the adults received them, and old people on small linden boards in a lying position.

Children were placed on special shovels

Young unmarried girls They also used the stove when it was necessary to wash. This is due to the belief that angry spirits live in the baths - banniki and kikimoras, who are capable of committing all sorts of atrocities to a girl. If the young beauty left the bath accessories in the wrong place or disturbed the peace of the spirit with any actions, he could get angry and prop the door, letting in a couple, or knock over a basin of boiling water on the culprit.

Since Rus' had its own rules for going to the bathhouse, unmarried girls could only wash with children or young sisters, who also did not have spouses. In some villages, a lonely girl going to the bathhouse was equated with a sin, and the girls had no choice other than washing in the oven.

Free women were only allowed to bathe with their sisters

Washing at home under the above circumstances was much calmer. Each hut had a red corner in which icons were placed, and it was possible to perform water procedures without fear of evil spirits.

We washed ourselves in a Russian oven and medicinal purposes. Family members who fell ill with “dandruff” (cough, presumably bronchial) were placed in the oven, where tubs of special decoctions awaited them. Before being sent to the oven, a similar herbal decoction was given orally, and the body was coated with a specially prepared dough. This was done in order to warm up the body as much as possible both outside and inside. A scarf or cap was placed on the patient's head to prevent heat stroke, called "fumes."

Those suffering from certain types of skin diseases were also washed in the oven. Such people were not taken to the bathhouse, so that the disease would not affect other family members with the water. After washing, the broom, along with the flooring on which the patient was placed, was burned. During the subsequent firing of the furnace, the disease was, as it were, “burned”, not allowing it to get out. This method of cleansing helped to localize the disease, and subsequently get rid of it altogether.

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All adherents of Russophobia love to appeal to Lermontov’s poem “All Russians are unscrupulous pigs,” written by him after being offended by the state system of the Russian Empire, whose repressive apparatus put a little pressure on the poet. I.R. Shafarevich also noted that this poem is studied several times in the school course in order to reinforce the stereotype about the uncleanliness of Rus' and, consequently, the Russian people. This stereotypical myth is driven into people's heads with extraordinary persistence.

"All Russians are unscrupulous pigs"

Goodbye, unwashed Russia,
Country of slaves, country of masters,
And you, blue uniforms,
And you, their devoted people.
Perhaps behind the wall of the Caucasus
I'll hide from your pashas,
From their all-seeing eye,
From their all-hearing ears.

M. Yu. Lermontov.

I think there is no need to remind you that this myth has already been debunked several times. You just have to remember the thesis about baths and perfumes. Baths were (and are) in Rus', and perfumery was in “enlightened Europe”. But for some reason, home-grown liberals get into trouble over and over again, expressing the myth about “unwashed Russia.” They forget that in any remote village in Rus' there are always baths. And our land is not deprived of water, unlike Europe. Wash to your heart's content. But in Europe there has always been tension with water. That’s why the British still wash their faces with the drain hole plugged. To save money, they sacrifice hygiene.

“And they do not have baths, but they make themselves a house made of wood and caulk its cracks with greenish moss. In one of the corners of the house they build a fireplace made of stones, and at the very top, in the ceiling, they open a window for the smoke to escape. There is always a container in the house for water, which is poured over the hot fireplace, and then hot steam rises. And in each hand, each has a bunch of dry branches, which, waving around the body, set the air in motion, attracting it to themselves... And then the pores on their body open and flow with They have rivers of sweat, and on their faces there is joy and a smile." Abu Obeid Abdallahala Bekri, Arab traveler and scientist.

Repeating the lines of the classic, the image of an unkempt and bearded man in a zipun appears before your eyes... Is the myth about traditional Russian untidiness true? There is an opinion that in Rus' people wore dirty, unwashed clothes, and the habit of washing came to us from the so-called civilized Europe. Is there much truth in this statement? Is this how it really happened?

Baths in Russia have been known since ancient times. The chronicler Nestor dates them to the first century AD. , when the Holy Apostle Andrew traveled along the Dnieper, preaching the Gospel word, and reached much north of it, “to where Novgorod is now,” where he saw a miracle - those steaming in a bathhouse. In it, according to his description, everyone turned into boiled crayfish in color. “Having heated up the stove in the wooden baths,” says Nestor, “they entered there naked and doused themselves with water; then they took rods and began to beat themselves, and they flogged themselves so much that they barely came out alive; but then, having doused themselves with cold water, they came to life. This is what they did. weekly, and, moreover, Nestor concludes, without being tormented by anyone, they tormented themselves, and did not perform ablution, but torment.”

The same evidence can be found in Herodotus. He noted that the inhabitants of the ancient Russian steppes always had among their settlements special huts with an ever-burning fire, where they heated stones red-hot and poured water on them, scattered hemp seed and washed their bodies in hot steam.

Personal hygiene of the population in medieval Europe practically did not exist, since no attention was paid to the body and care for it for religious reasons. In the 11th century, Pope Clement III issued a decree by virtue of which it was forbidden to bathe or even wash your face on Sundays. Among the Slavs, it was even customary to give birth not in the house, but in a well-heated bathhouse, since they believed that birth, like death, violates the border of invisible worlds. That is why women in labor moved away from people so as not to harm anyone. The birth of a child among the ancient Slavs was accompanied by washing and even steaming in a bathhouse. At the same time they said: “Lord, bless the steam and the broom.”

In Russian fairy tales, there is often a plot with the healing of the hero by living and dead water. Ilya Muromets, who lay motionless for thirty years, gained strength from her and defeated evil - the Nightingale the Robber.

In the countries of Western Europe at that time there were no baths, since the church, considering the ancient Roman baths a source of debauchery, banned them. And in general, she recommended washing as little as possible so as not to be distracted from work and serving the church.

The chronicle of 966 says that in the charter of the Novgorod and Kyiv prince Vladimir the Red Sun, baths were called institutions for the infirm. Perhaps these were the first unique hospitals in Rus'.

In ancient times, everyone loved baths, for which the Russian prince once paid. Benedict, the leader of the Hungarian army, besieging the city of Galich in 1211, captured Prince Roman Igorevich, who was carelessly washing himself.

In “civilized” Europe they did not even know about the existence of such a convenient way to maintain hygiene until in the 13th century the Crusaders brought an overseas amusement from the Holy Land - oriental baths. However, by the time of the Reformation, baths were again eradicated as a source of debauchery.

Few people know how False Dmitry was convicted of not being Russian, and therefore an impostor? It’s very simple - he didn’t go to the bathhouse. And at that time only a European could do this.

A native of Courland, Jacob Reitenfels, who lived in Moscow in 1670-1673, notes in notes about Russia: “Russians consider it impossible to form friendship without inviting them to the bathhouse and then eating at the same table.”

Who was right was shown in the 14th century by the terrible plague epidemic “Black Death”, which destroyed almost half of the population of Europe. Although the plague came from the East, in particular from India, it bypassed Russia.

The Venetian traveler Marco Polo cites the following facts: “Venetian women wore expensive silks, furs, flaunted jewelry, but did not wash, and their underwear was either terribly dirty or had none at all.”

The famous researcher Leonid Vasilyevich Milov writes in his book “The Great Russian Plowman”: “A diligent peasant wife washed her children two or three times every week, changed their linen every week, and aired some of the pillows and feather beds in the air, beat them out.” A weekly bath was mandatory for the whole family. No wonder people said: “The bathhouse soars, the bathhouse rules. The bathhouse will fix everything.”

The reformer Peter the Great encouraged the construction of baths: no duties were charged for their construction. “Elixirs are good, but a bath is better,” he said.

For many centuries, there was a bathhouse in almost every courtyard in Russia. The famous French writer Théophile Gautier noted in his book “Travel through Russia” that “under his shirt the Russian man is pure in body.”

At the same time, in the so-called advanced and tidy Europe, even crowned heads were not ashamed of their neglect of washing. Queen Isabella of Castile (who ruled Spain in the second half of the 15th century) admitted that she washed only twice in her entire life - at birth and before her wedding.

There is information that the residents of Reutlingen convinced Emperor Frederick III not to come to visit them. The emperor did not listen and almost drowned in the mud along with his horse. This was in the 15th century, and the reason for this trouble was that residents threw waste and all slops out of the windows directly onto the heads of passers-by, and the streets were practically not cleaned.

Here is a description by a Russian historian of the inhabitants of a European city of the 18th century: “They rarely wash. In fact, there is nowhere to wash. There are no public baths in sight. The high hairstyles of ladies and gentlemen are an excellent incubator for fleas. They did not know soap, as a result of all this perfume was invented to eliminate unpleasant odors from bodies and clothes."

While Russia was regularly washing itself, “unwashed” Europe was inventing ever stronger perfumes, as Patrick Suskind’s famous book “Perfume” tells. The ladies at the court of Louis the Sun (a contemporary of Peter the Great) were constantly itching. Elegant flea traps and ivory scratchers can be seen today in many French museums.

The edict of the French king Louis XIV stated that when visiting the court, one should not spare strong perfume so that its aroma drowns out the stench from bodies and clothes.

Every cloud has a silver lining; perfumes have appeared in Europe that are already used for other purposes than their intended purpose - to drive away bedbugs and eliminate unpleasant odors.

The notes of the German traveler Airaman, who walked on foot from Konigsberg to Narva and from Narva to Moscow, say: “I want to briefly recall the bathhouses of the Muscovites or their washing habits, because we don’t know... In general, in no country "You will find that washing is valued as much as in this Moscow. Women find their highest pleasure in this."

The German doctor Zwierlein wrote in 1788 in his book “A Doctor for Lovers of Beauty or an Easy Means to Make Yourself Beautiful and Healthy in Your Whole Body”: “Whoever washes his face, head, neck and chest with water more often will not have flux, swelling, and "also toothache and earache, runny nose and consumption. In Russia, these diseases are completely unknown, because Russians from birth begin to get used to washing themselves with water." It should be noted that at that time only rich people could afford books; what was going on among the poor, who had no one to teach them how to wash themselves!

Russian baths began to spread throughout the world after the War of 1812. Napoleonic army consisted of soldiers from different countries, thus warming up during frosts in the bathhouse, they brought the custom of steaming to their countries. In 1812, the first Russian bathhouse opened in Berlin, later in Paris, Bern and Prague.

The book “True, Convenient and Cheap Means Used in France for the Extermination of Bedbugs,” published in Europe in 1829, says: “Bedbugs have an extremely fine sense of smell, therefore, in order to avoid bites, you need to rub yourself with perfume. The smell of a rubbed body will make you run away with perfume.” bedbugs for a while, but soon, driven by hunger, they overcome their aversion to smells and return to suck the body with even greater ferocity than before.” This book was very popular in Europe, but Russia did not encounter a similar problem, since it constantly went to the bathhouse.

At the end of the 18th century, the Portuguese doctor Antonio Nunez Ribero Sanches published in Europe the book “Respectful Essays on Russian Baths”, where he writes: “My sincere desire extends only to showing the superiority of the Russian Baths over those that were in ancient times among the Greeks and Romans and over those currently in use among Turks, both to preserve health and to cure many diseases."

Many Europeans noted the Russians’ passion for taking steam baths.

“The Russian peasant,” noted in the encyclopedic dictionary “Great Brockhaus,” published in Amsterdam and Leipzig, “thanks to his favorite bath, was significantly ahead of his European counterparts in terms of concern for clean skin.”

The book “Medical and Topographical Information about St. Petersburg,” published at the beginning of the 19th century in many European countries, says: “There is no people in the world who use steam baths as often as Russians. Having become accustomed to it at least once from infancy to be in a steam bath a week, a Russian can hardly do without it.”

The luxurious Sandunov baths, notes Gilyarovsky, a researcher of Moscow life, were visited by both Griboyedov’s and Pushkin’s Moscow, the one that gathered in the salon of the brilliant Zinaida Volkonskaya and in the prestigious English Club. While telling the story about the baths, the writer quotes the words of the old actor Ivan Grigorovsky: “I saw Pushkin too... loved to take a hot steam bath.”

German hygienist Max Ploten draws attention to the fact that the Russian bathhouse began to spread in Europe, especially in Germany. “But we Germans,” he writes, “using this healing remedy, never even mention its name, rarely remember that we owe this step forward in cultural development to our eastern neighbor.”

In the 19th century, Europe nevertheless realized the need for regular hygiene. In 1889, the German Folk Bath Society was founded in Berlin. The society's motto was: "Every German has a bath every week." True, by the beginning of the First World War, there were only 224 bathhouses in all of Germany. Unlike Germany, in Russia already at the beginning of the 18th century, in Moscow alone there were 1,500 bathhouses in private courtyards and in city estates, as well as 70 public ones.

This is how long Europe's path to understanding the need for personal hygiene was. It was the Russians who played a huge role in instilling in Europeans a love of cleanliness. And today the myth is cultivated about an unwashed, uncivilized Russia, which taught Europeans about personal hygiene. As we see, this myth is refuted by the history of our country.

Edited 05/30/2012

Probably, many, having read foreign literature, and especially historical books by foreign authors about ancient Rus', were horrified by the dirt and stench that reigned in Russian villages in those distant times. This template has become so ingrained in our consciousness that even modern Russian films about ancient Rus' are filmed according to this obviously false scenario, and continue to deceive us about the fact that our ancestors lived in dugouts or in the forest in swamps and did not wash for years , wore rags, and as a result they often got sick and died in middle age, rarely reaching 40 years of age.

When someone wants to describe the supposedly “real” past of another people, and especially the enemy, and it is precisely such “barbarians” that the entire supposedly “civilized” world sees us, then by composing a fictitious past, they are, of course, writing off themselves, since the other they cannot even know, either from their own experience or from the experience of their ancestors.

But lies always come to light sooner or later, and we now know for certain who was really unwashed and who smelled clean and beautiful. And enough facts from the past have accumulated for an inquisitive reader to evoke appropriate images and personally experience all the delights of a supposedly pure Europe, and decide for himself where the truth is and where the lies are.

So, one of the first mentions of the Slavs that Western historians give notes as the MAIN feature of the Slavic tribes that they "pouring water", that is, they wash themselves in running water, while all other peoples of Europe washed themselves in tubs, basins, and bathtubs. Even Herodotus in the 5th century BC. speaks of the inhabitants of the steppes of the northeast that they pour water on stones and steam in huts. Washing under a stream seems so natural to us that we do not seriously suspect that we are almost the only, or at least one of the few, peoples in the world who do exactly this.

Foreigners coming to Russia in the 5th-8th centuries noted the cleanliness and neatness of Russian cities. Here the houses did not stick to each other, but stood wide apart, there were spacious, ventilated courtyards. People lived in communities, in peace, which means that parts of the streets were common and therefore no one, like in Paris, could throw a bucket of slop just onto the street, demonstrating at the same time that only my house is private property, and don’t give a damn about the rest!

I repeat once again that the custom "pour water" previously in Europe distinguished precisely our ancestors of the Slavic-Aryans, was assigned specifically to them as a distinctive feature, which clearly had some kind of ritual ancient meaning. And this meaning, of course, was transmitted to our ancestors many thousands of years ago through the commandments of the gods, namely the god Perun, who flew to our Earth 25,000 years ago, bequeathed: “Wash your hands after your deeds, for whoever does not wash his hands loses the power of God.”.

His other commandment reads: “Cleanse yourself in the waters of Iriy, which is a river flowing in the Holy Land, in order to wash your white body and sanctify it with God’s power.”. The most interesting thing is that these commandments work flawlessly for the Russian in the soul of a person. So any of us probably becomes disgusted and “the cats are scratching at our souls” when we feel dirty, or very sweaty after hard physical labor, or the summer heat, and we want to quickly wash off this dirt from ourselves and refresh ourselves under the streams of clean water. I am sure that we have a genetic dislike for dirt, and therefore we strive, even without knowing Perun’s commandment about hand washing, always coming from the street, for example, to immediately wash our hands and wash ourselves in order to feel fresh and get rid of fatigue.

What was going on in supposedly enlightened and pure Europe at the beginning of the Middle Ages and, oddly enough, right up to the 18th century?

Having destroyed the culture of the ancient Etruscans (these Russians or Russes of Etruria) - the Russian people who in ancient times settled Italy and created a great civilization there, which proclaimed the cult of purity and had baths, around which a MYTH was created (my transcript by A.N. - we distorted or distorted the facts - MYTH) about the Roman Empire, which never existed, and whose monuments have survived to this day, the Jewish barbarians (and this was undoubtedly them and no matter what kind of people they covered for their vile purposes) enslaved Western Europe for many centuries with its lack of culture, dirt and depravity.

Europe hasn't washed itself for centuries!!!

We first find confirmation of this in the letters of Princess Anna, the daughter of Yaroslav the Wise, Prince of Kyiv in the 11th century AD. e.

By marrying his daughter to the French king Henry I, he allegedly strengthened his influence in “enlightened” Western Europe. In fact, it was prestigious for European kings to create alliances with Russia, since Europe was far behind in all respects, both cultural and economic, compared to the Great Empire of our ancestors. Princess Anna brought with her to Paris, then a small village in France, several convoys of her personal library, and was horrified to discover that her husband, the King of France, could not only read, but also write, which she was not slow in writing to her father, Yaroslav the Wise. And she reproached him for sending her to this wilderness! This is a real fact, there is a real letter Princess Anna: “Father, why do you hate me? And he sent me to this dirty village, where there was no place to wash myself.”. And the Bible that she brought with her to France, in Russian, still serves as an attribute on which all French presidents, and previously kings, take the oath.

European cities were drowning in sewage: “The French king Philip II Augustus, accustomed to the smell of his capital, fainted in 1185 when he stood near the palace, and carts passing by him exploded street sewage...”.

The historian Draper presented in his book A History of the Relations between Religion and Science a rather vivid picture of the conditions in which the people of Europe lived in the Middle Ages. Here are the main features of this picture: “The surface of the continent was then covered for the most part with impenetrable forests; There were monasteries and towns here and there.

In the lowlands and along the rivers there were swamps, sometimes stretching for hundreds of miles and emitting their poisonous miasma, which spread fevers. In Paris and London, houses were wooden, smeared with clay, covered with straw or reeds. There were no windows and, before the invention of sawmills, few houses had wooden floors... There were no chimneys. Such dwellings hardly had any protection from the weather. Gutters were not taken care of: rotting remains and rubbish were simply thrown out the door.

Cleanliness was completely unknown: high dignitaries, such as the Archbishop of Canterbury, were infested with insects.

The food consisted of rough plant products such as peas or even tree bark. In some places the villagers did not know bread, “Is it surprising after this,” the historian further notes , - that during the famine of 1030 human meat was fried and sold, or that in the famine of 1258 15 thousand people died of hunger in London?.

A certain Dionysius Fabricius, rector of the church in Fellin, in a collection he published about the history of Livonia, included a story related to the monks of the Falkenau monastery near Dorpat (now Tartu), the plot of which dates back to the 13th century. The monks of the newly founded Dominican monastery sought monetary subsidies from Rome, and supported their request with a description of their ascetic pastime: “every day, having gathered in a specially built room, they fire up the stove as hot as the heat can be tolerated, after which they undress, whip themselves with rods, and then douse themselves with ice water.” This is how they fight the carnal passions that tempt them. An Italian was sent from Rome to verify the truth of what was described. During a similar bath procedure, he almost gave his soul to God and quickly left for Rome, testifying there to the truth of the voluntary martyrdom of the monks, who received the requested subsidy.

When the Crusades began, the Crusaders amazed both the Arabs and the Byzantines with what they reeked of “like homeless people” as they would say now. The West appeared to the East as synonymous with savagery, dirt and barbarism, and indeed it was this barbarism. The pilgrims who returned to Europe tried to introduce the observed custom of washing in the bathhouse, but it didn’t work out that way! Since the 13th century, baths have already officially been banned by the Church as a source of debauchery and infection! So that the gallant knights and troubadours of that era emitted a stench for several meters around them. The ladies were no worse. You can still see in museums back scratchers made from expensive wood and ivory, as well as flea traps...

As a result, the 11th century was probably one of the most terrible in the history of Europe. Quite naturally, a plague epidemic broke out. Italy and England lost half of their population, Germany, France, Spain - more than a third. It is not known for certain how much the East lost, but it is known that the plague came from India and China through Turkey and the Balkans. She only went around Russia and stopped at its borders, exactly in the place where baths were common. It looks like biological warfare of those years.

I can add to the word about ancient Europe about their hygiene and bodily cleanliness. Let it be known to you that the French invented perfume not to smell, but not to STINK! Yes exactly. According to one of the royals, or rather Sun King LouisXIV, a real Frenchman washes only twice in his life - at birth and before death. Only 2 times! Horrible! And I immediately remembered the supposedly unenlightened and uncultured Rus', in which every man had his own bathhouse, and at least once a week people washed in the bathhouses and never got sick. Since the bath, in addition to bodily cleanliness, also successfully clears illnesses. And our ancestors knew this very well and constantly used it.

Why, a civilized man, a Byzantine missionary Belisarius, having visited the Novgorod land in 850 AD, wrote about the Slovenes and Rusyns: “The Orthodox Slovenians and Rusyns are wild people, and their lives are wild and godless. Men and girls naked, locking themselves together in a hotly heated hut and torturing their bodies, lashing themselves mercilessly with wooden rods, until exhaustion? and after jumping into an ice hole or a snowdrift and, having become cold, again went to the hut to torture his body.”.

How could this dirty, unwashed Europe know what a Russian bathhouse is? Until the 18th century, until the Russian Slavs taught “clean” Europeans how to make soap, they did not wash. Therefore, they constantly had epidemics of typhus, plague, cholera, smallpox, and so on. Marie Antoinette I washed my face only twice in my life: once before the wedding, the second time before the execution.

Why did Europeans buy silk from us? Yes, because there were no lice there. But by the time this silk reached Paris, a kilogram of silk was already worth a kilogram of gold. Therefore, only rich people could afford silk.

Patrick Suskind in his work “Perfume” he described how “fragrant” Paris of the 18th century was, but by the 11th century during the time of Queen Anna Yaroslavna, this passage will also have a very good example:

“The cities of that time had a stench almost unimaginable to us modern people. The streets stank of manure, the courtyards stank of urine, the staircases stank of rotten wood and rat droppings, the kitchens of foul coal and lamb fat; the unventilated living rooms stank of caked dust, the bedrooms of dirty sheets, damp feather beds and the sharp-sweet fumes of chamber pots. There was a smell of sulfur coming from the fireplaces, caustic alkalis from the tanneries, and released blood from the slaughterhouses. People stank of sweat and unwashed clothes; their mouths smelled like rotten teeth, their stomachs smelled like onion juice, and their bodies, as they grew old, began to smell like old cheese and sour milk and painful tumors. The rivers stank, the squares stank, the churches stank, the bridges and palaces stank. Peasants and priests, apprentices and wives of masters stank, the entire noble class stank, even the king himself stank - he stank like a predatory animal, and the queen stank like an old goat, in winter and summer.< ... >Every human activity, both creative and destructive, every manifestation of nascent or dying life was accompanied by a stench.”

The Duke of Norfolk refused to bathe, allegedly out of religious belief. His body was covered with ulcers. Then the servants waited until his lordship was dead drunk, and barely washed him off.

In the "Courtesy Manual", published at the end of XVIII century (Manuel de civilite, 1782) it is formally prohibited to use water for washing, “for this makes the face more sensitive to cold in winter, and heat in summer”.

Queen of Spain Isabella of Castile proudly admitted that she washed only twice in her life - at birth and before the wedding!

Louis XIV(May 14, 1643 - September 1, 1715) washed only twice in his life - and only then on the advice of doctors. The washing horrified the monarch so much that he swore off ever taking water treatments. Russian ambassadors to the court of Louis XIV, nicknamed the Sun King, wrote that their Majesty king of france “it stinks like a wild beast” !

Even accustomed to the constant stench that surrounded him from birth, the king PhilipII Once he fainted when he was standing at the window, and passing carts loosened a dense, multi-year layer of sewage with their wheels. By the way, this king died of... scabies! Dad died from it too ClementV II! A Clement V died of dysentery. One of the French princesses died, eaten by lice! No wonder they called it lice "God's pearls" and was considered a sign of holiness.

The famous French historian Fernand Braudel wrote in his book “Structures of Everyday Life”: “The chamber pots continued to be poured out of the windows, as they always had - the streets were cesspools. The bathroom was a rare luxury. Fleas, lice and bedbugs infested both London and Paris, both in the homes of the rich and in the houses of the poor.”.

The Louvre, the palace of the French kings, did not have a single toilet. They emptied themselves in the courtyard, on the stairs, on the balconies. When in “need”, guests, courtiers and kings either sat down on a wide window sill near an open window, or they were brought “night vases”, the contents of which were then poured out at the back doors of the palace. The same thing happened in Versailles, for example, during the time of Louis XIV, life under whom is well known thanks to the memoirs of the Duke de Saint-Simon. The court ladies of the Palace of Versailles, right in the middle of a conversation (and sometimes even during mass in a chapel or cathedral), stood up and relaxed, in a corner, relieved their minor and not so much need.

There is a well-known story that Versailles guides love to tell, how one day the Spanish ambassador arrived to the king and, going into his bedchamber (it was in the morning), found himself in an awkward situation - his eyes watered from the royal amber. The ambassador politely asked to move the conversation to the park and jumped out of the royal bedroom as if scalded. But in the park, where he hoped to breathe in fresh air, the unlucky ambassador simply fainted from the stench - the bushes in the park served as a permanent latrine for all the courtiers, and the servants poured sewage there.

I’ll say a few more words about the morals of the barbaric and wild West.

The Sun King, like all other kings, allowed his courtiers to use any corner of Versailles as toilets.

To this day, the parks of Versailles stink of urine on a warm day. The walls of the castles were equipped with heavy curtains, and blind niches were made in the corridors. But wouldn’t it be easier to equip some toilets in the yard or just run to the park described above? No, this never even occurred to anyone, because diarrhea stood guard over tradition. Merciless, inexorable, capable of taking anyone, anywhere by surprise. Given the appropriate quality of medieval food and water, diarrhea was a constant phenomenon. The same reason can be traced in the fashion of those years (XII-XV centuries) for men's trousers, consisting of only vertical ribbons in several layers.

In 1364, a man named Thomas Dubuisson was given the task “to paint bright red crosses in the garden or corridors of the Louvre to warn people to shit there - so that people would consider such things to be sacrilege in these places”. Getting to the throne room was a very messy journey in itself. “In and around the Louvre,” wrote in 1670 a man who wanted to build public toilets, - inside the courtyard and in its surroundings, in the alleys, behind the doors - almost everywhere you can see thousands of piles and smell the most different smells of the same thing - a product of the natural waste of those who live here and come here every day". Periodically, all its noble residents left the Louvre so that the palace could be washed and ventilated.

And in a book for reading on the history of the Middle Ages by Sergei Skazkin about the culture of Europeans we read the following: “Residents of the houses threw out the entire contents of buckets and tubs directly onto the street, to the grief of an unwary passerby. Stagnant slops formed stinking puddles, and the restless city pigs, of which there were a great many, completed the picture.”.

Unsanitary conditions, disease and hunger - this is the face of medieval Europe. Even the nobility in Europe could not always eat enough. Out of ten children, it’s good if two or three survived, but a third of women died during the first birth. Lighting is, at best, wax candles, and usually oil lamps or a torch. Hungry faces, disfigured by smallpox, leprosy and, later, syphilis, looked out from windows covered with bull blisters.

The gallant knights and beautiful ladies of that era emitted a stench for several meters around them. You can still see in museums back scratchers made from expensive wood and ivory, as well as flea traps. Saucers were also placed on tables so that people could culturally suppress lice. But in Rus' they didn’t put saucers. But not out of stupidity, but because there was no need for it!

Victorian London was filled with sewage and stench as 24 tons of horse manure and one and a half million cubic feet of human faeces flowed into the Thames through sewers every day before a closed sewer system was built. And this was at a time when Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson were chasing Professor Moriarty around London.

In the Netherlands, considered the most advanced power in a technical sense, and where the Russian Tsar Peter came to study, “in 1660 people still sat down to eat without washing their hands, no matter what they were doing”. Historian Paul Zumthor, author of Everyday Life in Holland in the Time of Rembrandt, notes: “the chamber pot could sit under the bed for an eternity before the maid took it away and poured the contents into the channel”. “Public baths were practically unknown, continues Zyumtor. — Back in 1735, there was only one such establishment in Amsterdam. The sailors and fishermen, thoroughly smelling of fish, spread an unbearable stench. The personal toilet was purely decorative.”.

“Water baths insulate the body, but weaken the body and enlarge the pores, so they can cause illness and even death.” , - stated in one medical treatise of the 15th century. In the XV-XVI centuries. Rich townspeople washed themselves once every six months in the 17th-18th centuries. they stopped taking baths altogether. Sometimes water procedures were used only for medicinal purposes. They carefully prepared for the procedure and gave an enema the day before.

Most aristocrats saved themselves from dirt with the help of a scented cloth with which they wiped their bodies. It was recommended to moisten the armpits and groin with rose water. Men wore bags of aromatic herbs between their shirt and vest. Ladies used exclusively aromatic powder.

It is not difficult to guess that the church of that time stood with a wall in defense of dirt and against caring for one’s body. The Church in the Middle Ages assumed that “If a person is baptized, that is, sprinkled with holy water, then he is clean for the rest of his life. That is, it means there is no need to wash.”. And if a person does not wash, then fleas and lice appear, which carry all diseases: typhoid, cholera, plague. That's why Europe was dying out, in addition to wars, and also from diseases. And wars and diseases, as we see, were provoked by the same church and its instrument of subjugation of the masses - religion!

Before the victory of Christianity, more than a thousand baths operated in Rome alone. The first thing Christians did when they came to power was to close all the baths. People of that time were suspicious of washing their bodies: nudity was a sin, and it was cold and you could catch a cold.

In Rus', since ancient times, great attention has been paid to maintaining cleanliness and neatness. Residents of Ancient Rus' were aware of hygienic care for the skin of the face, hands, body, and hair. Russian women knew very well that yogurt, sour cream, cream and honey, fats and oils soften and restore the skin of the face, neck, hands, making it elastic and velvety; Rinse your hair well with eggs, and rinse it with herbal infusion. So they found and took the necessary funds from the surrounding nature: they collected herbs, flowers, fruits, berries, roots, the medicinal and cosmetic properties of which they knew.

Our ancestors knew the properties of herbal remedies perfectly, so they were mainly used for cosmetic purposes. The medicinal properties of wild herbs were also well known. They collected flowers, grass, berries, fruits, and plant roots and skillfully used them to prepare cosmetics.

For blush and lipstick, they used raspberry and cherry juice, and rubbed their cheeks with beets. Black soot was used to blacken the eyes and eyebrows, and sometimes brown paint was used. To make the skin white, they used wheat flour or chalk. Plants were also used to dye hair: for example, onion peels were used to dye hair brown, and saffron and chamomile were used to dye hair light yellow. Scarlet dye was obtained from barberry, crimson from young apple tree leaves, green from onion feathers, nettle leaves, yellow from saffron leaves, sorrel and alder bark, etc.

Household cosmetics among Russian women were based on the use of products of animal origin (milk, curdled milk, sour cream, honey, egg yolk, animal fats) and various plants (cucumbers, cabbage, carrots, beets, etc.); burdock oil was used for hair care.

In ancient Rus', great attention was paid to hygiene and skin care. Therefore, cosmetic “rituals” were most often carried out in a bathhouse. Russian baths with a kind of biting massage with oak or birch brooms were especially common. To cure skin and mental illnesses, ancient healers recommended pouring herbal infusions onto hot stones. To soften and nourish the skin, it is good to apply honey to it.

In the baths, the skin was treated, it was cleaned with special scrapers, and massaged with aromatic balms. Among the bathhouse attendants there were even hair pullers, and they performed this procedure without pain.

In Rus', weekly bathing was common. In the arsenal of prevention of hardening of a reasonable hygiene system, the Russian bath has been in first place from time immemorial.

Being clean in body and healthy in soul, our ancestors were also famous for their longevity, which in our times not everyone even strives for, realizing that the environment is poisoned, food is GMO, medicines are poison, and in general, living a lot is harmful because life dying...

Also, I would like to give some examples from the recent past. From our modern times, so to speak...

On the Internet, we came across memories of eyewitnesses about what they saw hand washing abroad, which for them is considered the norm: “Recently I had to observe the family of a Russian emigrant who married a Canadian. Their son, who doesn’t even speak Russian, washes his hands under an open tap like his mother, while his father plugs the sink and splashes in his own dirty foam. Washing under the stream seems so natural to Russians that we do not seriously suspect that we were almost the only (at least one of the few) people in the world who did just that.”.

Soviet people in the 60s, when the first bourgeois films appeared on the screens, were shocked when they saw how a beautiful French actress got up from the bath and put on a robe without washing off the foam. Horror!

But Russians experienced real animal horror en masse when they began to travel abroad in the 90s, go on visits and watch how the owners, after dinner, plugged the sink with a stopper, put dirty dishes in it, poured liquid soap, and then from this sink, infested with slop and uncleanliness, they simply pulled out the plates and, without rinsing them under running water, put them on the dryer! Some had a gag reflex, because they immediately imagined that everything they had previously eaten was on the same dirty plate. When friends in Russia were told about this, people simply refused to believe it, believing that this was some special case of dishonesty of an individual European family.

International journalist Vsevolod Ovchinnikov has a book “Sakura and Oak”, in which he described the custom described above that he witnessed during his stay in England and amazed him: “the owner of the house where the journalist was staying, after the feast, dipped the glasses in a sink with soapy water and put them on the dryer without rinsing”. Ovchinnikov writes that at that moment he attributed the owner’s action to intoxication, however, later he was convinced that this method of washing was typical for England.

Among other things, I personally visited England and became convinced that hot water is truly a luxury for the British. Since the centralized water supply provides only cold water, hot water is heated through small 3-5 liter electric boilers. These boilers were in our kitchen and shower. In our Slavic dishwashing, when running water runs out quickly, the hot water quickly runs out, and often the boiler cannot cope with our needs, we had to use detergents in order to then wash the dishes with cold water. This was in 1998-9, but even now nothing has changed there.

A few words about longevity. No matter how Western historians (Iz-TORY) try to humiliate us and attribute to our ancestors an early death from all sorts of diseases and undeveloped medicine - all this is just nonsense, with which they are trying to hide the real past of the Slavic-Aryans, and to impose the achievements of modern medicine, which supposedly prolonged the lifespan of the Russians, who, even before the Jewish coup of 1917, died en masse before reaching old age, not to mention extreme old age.

The truth is that the natural and normal minimum life span of our ancestors was considered the age of one circle of life, namely 144 years. Some lived more than one circle of life, but maybe two or three. Many of us in our family had great-great-grandfathers and great-great-grandmothers who lived longer than 80-90 years and this was considered normal. And in the family books there are records of 98, 160, 168, 196 years of life.

If anyone is interested in the recipe for longevity, it is simple and I personally came to it a long time ago, thinking about why our old pensioners die early. And the other day I found confirmation of my guess from other people, and the recipe for longevity exactly coincides with my guesses.

I don’t know how to make secrets, I don’t like them and I won’t - that’s not the Russian way!

By the way, I give a recipe for identifying people of Jewish nationality in your environment, this is especially evident in childhood, in children's games. So, a Russian person does not make secrets - he is open in soul, he shares what he knows or has with a completely pure heart and thoughts, and does not elevate the possession of some thing or knowledge into a cult. On the contrary, Jewish children are brought up in a spirit of superiority over others, they are not allowed to open their souls to others. Therefore, you can often hear from such children something like this: “I won’t tell you - it’s a secret!”. And at the same time, they begin to tease the curiosity of other children, provoking them to receive financial rewards for revealing the secret. Take a closer look at children, at their games - it all manifests itself at the genetic level!!!

So, it is as simple as it is difficult for many of us - it is work!

Neither pills, nor a healthy lifestyle, although it is inextricably linked with work, since those who work lead a healthy lifestyle - they simply have no time to have fun and spend time idle. Therefore, instead of stadiums and gyms, it is better to work for the benefit of your clan (family), putting your soul into the works of your labor and longevity will be much more real for you than the imposed meaningless wasting of life, which leads only to one thing - to early old age through the wear and tear of your body and, as a result, to early death. I hope this is already an obvious fact for every reasonable person!

After all, as our ancestors said - “while we work, we live”! On the contrary, what kills old people is not work, from which we want to limit them, taking away their responsibilities around the house and running the household, while wanting to spare them and give them more time for rest, but inactivity.

Most likely, this is precisely why the state pension system was introduced, in order to quickly bring people into a state of lack of demand, professional unfitness, and thereby deliberately provoke death not through the natural aging of the body, but from inaction, from uselessness to this society and their family.

The fact that the descendants of the great Slavic-Aryans are still alive, despite the fact that in the past they were most exposed to wars and genocide, is not due to any special Slavic fertility, but due to cleanliness and health. We were always bypassed or little affected by all the epidemics of plague, cholera, and smallpox. And our task is to preserve and increase the heritage given by our ancestors!

We need to be proud that we are Russians, and thanks to the neatness of our Russian mothers, we grew up clean!

Probably, many, having read foreign literature, and especially “historical” books by foreign authors about ancient Rus', were horrified by the dirt and stench that supposedly reigned in Russian cities and villages in ancient times. Now this false template has become so ingrained in our consciousness that even modern films about ancient Rus' are made with the indispensable use of this lie, and, thanks to cinema, the falsehood continues that our ancestors allegedly lived in dugouts or in the forest in swamps, They didn’t wash for years, wore rags, and as a result they often got sick and died in middle age, rarely living past 40.

When someone, not very conscientious or decent, wants to describe the “real” past of another people, and especially an enemy (we have long been and quite seriously been considered an enemy by the entire “civilized” world), then, by inventing a fictitious past, they write off, of course, from yourself, since they cannot know anything else either from their own experience or from the experience of their ancestors. This is exactly what “enlightened” Europeans have been doing for many centuries, diligently guided through life, and long ago resigned to their unenviable fate.

But lies always come to light sooner or later, and we now know for certain Who in fact was unwashed, but who smelt clean and beautiful. And enough facts from the past have accumulated to evoke appropriate images in the inquisitive reader, and to personally experience all the “charms” of a supposedly clean and well-groomed Europe, and to decide for himself where - Truth, And where - lie.

So, one of the first mentions of the Slavs that Western historians give notes how home the peculiarity of the Slavic tribes is that they "pouring water", that is wash in running water, while all other peoples of Europe washed themselves in tubs, basins, buckets and bathtubs. Even Herodotus in the 5th century BC. speaks of the inhabitants of the steppes of the northeast that they pour water on stones and steam in huts. Washing under jet It seems so natural to us that we do not seriously suspect that we are almost the only, or at least one of the few, peoples in the world that do exactly this.

Foreigners who came to Russia in the 5th-8th centuries noted the cleanliness and neatness of Russian cities. Here the houses did not stick to each other, but stood wide apart, there were spacious, ventilated courtyards. People lived in communities, in peace, which means that parts of the streets were common, and therefore no one, as in Paris, could splash out a bucket of slop just for the street, demonstrating that only my house is private property, and don't care about the rest!

I repeat once again that the custom "pour water" previously in Europe distinguished precisely our ancestors - the Slavic-Aryans, and was assigned specifically to them as a distinctive feature, which clearly had some kind of ritual, ancient meaning. And this meaning, of course, was transmitted to our ancestors many thousands of years ago through the commandments of the gods, namely, another god Perun, who flew to our Earth 25,000 years ago, bequeathed: “Wash your hands after your deeds, for whoever does not wash his hands loses the power of God...” His other commandment reads: “Cleanse yourself in the waters of Iriy, which is a river flowing in the Holy Land, in order to wash your white body and sanctify it with God’s power.”.

The most interesting thing is that these commandments work flawlessly for the Russian in the soul of a person. So, any of us probably feel disgusted and “the cats are scratching at our souls” when we feel dirty or very sweaty after hard physical labor or the summer heat, and we want to quickly wash off this dirt from ourselves and refresh ourselves under the streams of clean water. I am sure that we have a genetic dislike for dirt, and therefore we strive, even without knowing the commandment about washing our hands, always, coming from the street, for example, to immediately wash our hands and wash our face in order to feel fresh and get rid of fatigue.

What was going on in supposedly enlightened and pure Europe from the beginning of the Middle Ages, and, oddly enough, until the 18th century?

Having destroyed the culture of the ancient Etruscans (“these Russians” or “Rus of Etruria”) - the Russian people who in ancient times settled Italy and created a great civilization there, which proclaimed the cult of purity and had baths, the monuments of which have survived to this day, and around which it was created MYTH(MYTH - we distorted or distorted the facts - my transcript A.N..) about the Roman Empire, which never existed, the Jewish barbarians (and this was, undoubtedly, them, and no matter what kind of people they covered for their vile purposes) enslaved Western Europe for many centuries, imposing their lack of culture, filth and depravity .

Europe hasn't washed itself for centuries!!!

We first find confirmation of this in letters Princess Anna- daughter of Yaroslav the Wise, Kyiv prince of the 11th century AD. It is now believed that by marrying his daughter to the French king Henry I, he strengthened his influence in “enlightened” Western Europe. In fact, it was prestigious for European kings to create alliances with Russia, since Europe was far behind in all respects, both cultural and economic, compared to the Great Empire of our ancestors.

Princess Anna brought with me to Paris- then a small village in France - several carts with its own personal library, and was horrified to discover that her husband, the king of France, can not, Not only read, but also write, which she was quick to write to her father, Yaroslav the Wise. And she reproached him for sending her to this wilderness! This is a real fact, there is a real letter from Princess Anna, here is a fragment from it: “Father, why do you hate me? And he sent me to this dirty village, where there was nowhere to wash...” And the Russian-language one, which she brought with her to France, still serves as a sacred attribute on which all French presidents take the oath, and previously kings swore an oath.

When the Crusades began crusaders struck both the Arabs and the Byzantines by the fact that they reeked “like homeless people,” as they would say now. West became for the East synonymous with savagery, dirt and barbarism, and indeed he was this barbarism. Returning to Europe, the pilgrims tried to introduce the observed custom of washing in the bathhouse, but it didn’t work out that way! Since the 13th century baths already official hit banned, allegedly as a source of debauchery and infection!

As a result, the 14th century was probably one of the most terrible in the history of Europe. It flared up quite naturally plague epidemic. Italy and England lost half of their population, Germany, France, Spain - more than a third. How much the East lost is not known for certain, but it is known that the plague came from India and China through Turkey and the Balkans. She went around only Russia and stopped at its borders, exactly in the place where they were widespread baths. This is very similar to biological warfare those years.

Different eras are associated with different smells. the site publishes a story about personal hygiene in medieval Europe.

Medieval Europe quite deservedly smells of sewage and the stench of rotting bodies. The cities did not at all resemble the neat Hollywood pavilions where costume productions of Dumas' novels are filmed. The Swiss Patrick Suskind, known for his pedantic reproduction of everyday details of the era he describes, is horrified by the stench of European cities of the late Middle Ages.

Queen of Spain Isabella of Castile (late 15th century) admitted that she washed only twice in her entire life - at birth and on her wedding day.

The daughter of one of the French kings died from lice. Pope Clement V dies of dysentery.

The Duke of Norfolk refused to bathe, allegedly out of religious belief. His body was covered with ulcers. Then the servants waited until his lordship was dead drunk, and barely washed him off.

Clean, healthy teeth were considered a sign of low birth

In medieval Europe, clean, healthy teeth were considered a sign of low birth. Noble ladies were proud of their bad teeth. Representatives of the nobility, who naturally had healthy white teeth, were usually embarrassed by them and tried to smile less often so as not to show their “shame.”

A manual of courtesy issued at the end of the 18th century (Manuel de civilite, 1782) formally prohibits the use of water for washing, “for this makes the face more sensitive to cold in winter, and heat in summer.”

Louis XIV washed only twice in his life - and then on the advice of doctors. The washing horrified the monarch so much that he swore off ever taking water treatments. Russian ambassadors at his court wrote that their majesty “stinks like a wild beast.”

The Russians themselves throughout Europe were considered perverts for going to the bathhouse once a month - outrageously often (a widespread theory is that the Russian word “stink” comes from the French “merd” - “shit”, so far, however, we recognize as overly speculative).

Russian ambassadors wrote about Louis XIV that he “stinks like a wild beast”

There has long been anecdotal evidence of a preserved note sent by King Henry of Navarre, who had a reputation as a hardened Don Juan, to his beloved, Gabrielle de Estre: “Don’t wash yourself, honey, I’ll be with you in three weeks.”

The most typical European city street was 7-8 meters wide (this is, for example, the width of the important highway that leads to Notre Dame Cathedral). Small streets and alleys were much narrower - no more than two meters, and in many ancient cities there were streets even a meter wide. One of the streets of ancient Brussels was called “One Man Street,” indicating that two people could not separate there.

Louis XVI bathroom. The lid on the bathroom served both to retain heat and at the same time as a table for studying and eating. France, 1770

Detergents, as well as the very concept of personal hygiene, did not exist at all in Europe until the mid-nineteenth century.

The streets were washed and cleaned by the only janitor who existed in those days - rain, which, despite its sanitary function, was considered a punishment from God. The rains washed away all the dirt from secluded places, and stormy streams of sewage rushed through the streets, sometimes forming real rivers.

If in rural areas they dug cesspools, then in cities people defecated in narrow alleys and courtyards.

There were no detergents in Europe until the mid-nineteenth century.

But the people themselves were not much cleaner than the city streets. “Water baths warm the body, but weaken the body and dilate the pores. Therefore, they can cause illness and even death,” stated a 15th-century medical treatise. In the Middle Ages, it was believed that air contaminated with infection could penetrate into cleaned pores. That is why public baths were abolished by the highest decree. And if in the 15th - 16th centuries rich townspeople washed themselves at least once every six months, in the 17th - 18th centuries they stopped taking a bath altogether. True, sometimes I had to use it - but only for medicinal purposes. They carefully prepared for the procedure and gave an enema the day before.

All hygiene measures amounted to only lightly rinsing the hands and mouth, but not the entire face. “Under no circumstances should you wash your face,” doctors wrote in the 16th century, “as catarrh may occur or vision may deteriorate.” As for the ladies, they washed 2-3 times a year.

Medieval “cleanies” often changed their linen - it was believed that it absorbed all the dirt and cleansed the body of it. However, the change of linen was selective. A clean, starched shirt for every day was the privilege of wealthy people. That is why white ruffled collars and cuffs came into fashion, indicating the wealth and cleanliness of their owners. The poor people not only did not wash, but also did not wash their clothes - they did not have a change of linen. The cheapest shirt made of rough linen cost as much as a milk cow.

Christian preachers called for literally walking in rags and never washing, since this was precisely the way to achieve spiritual cleansing. It was also forbidden to wash because this would wash off the holy water that one had touched during baptism. As a result, people did not wash for years or did not know water at all. Dirt and lice were considered special signs of holiness. Monks and nuns set an appropriate example for other Christians to serve the Lord. They looked at the cleanliness with disgust. Lice were called "God's pearls" and were considered a sign of holiness. Saints, both male and female, usually boasted that water never touched their feet, except when they had to ford rivers. People relieved themselves wherever they had to. For example, on the main staircase of a palace or castle. The French royal court periodically moved from castle to castle due to the fact that there was literally nothing to breathe in the old one.

There is a well-known story about how one day the Spanish ambassador arrived to the king and, going into his bedchamber (it was in the morning), found himself in an awkward situation - his eyes watered from the royal amber. The ambassador politely asked to move the conversation to the park and jumped out of the royal bedroom as if scalded. But in the park, where he hoped to breathe in fresh air, the unlucky ambassador simply fainted from the stench - the bushes in the park served as a permanent latrine for all the courtiers, and the servants poured sewage there.

Toilet paper didn't come into existence until the late 1800s, and until then people used what they had at hand. The rich had the luxury of wiping themselves with strips of cloth. The poor used old rags, moss, and leaves.

Toilet paper didn't appear until the late 1800s.

The walls of the castles were equipped with heavy curtains, and blind niches were made in the corridors. But wouldn’t it be easier to equip some toilets in the yard or just run to the park described above? No, this never even occurred to anyone, because tradition was guarded by... diarrhea. Given the appropriate quality of medieval food, it was permanent. The same reason can be traced in the fashion of those years (XII-XV centuries) for men's trousers, consisting of only vertical ribbons in several layers.

Flea control methods were passive, such as scratching sticks. The nobility fights insects in their own way - during Louis XIV’s dinners at Versailles and the Louvre, there is a special page to catch the king’s fleas. Wealthy ladies, in order not to create a “zoo,” wear silk undershirts, believing that a louse will not cling to the silk, because it is slippery. This is how silk underwear appeared; fleas and lice really don’t stick to silk.

Beds, which are frames on turned legs, surrounded by a low lattice and always with a canopy, became of great importance in the Middle Ages. Such widespread canopies served a completely utilitarian purpose - to prevent bedbugs and other cute insects from falling from the ceiling.

It is believed that mahogany furniture became so popular because bedbugs were not visible on it.

In Russia in the same years

The Russian people were surprisingly clean. Even the poorest family had a bathhouse in their yard. Depending on how it was heated, they steamed in it “white” or “black”. If smoke from the stove came out through the chimney, they steamed “white.” If the smoke went directly into the steam room, then after ventilation the walls were doused with water, and this was called steaming “black”.

There was another original way to wash -in a Russian oven. After preparing the food, straw was laid inside, and the person, carefully, so as not to get dirty in soot, climbed into the oven. Water or kvass was splashed on the walls.

From time immemorial, the bathhouse was heated on Saturdays and before major holidays. First of all, men and boys went to wash, and always on an empty stomach.

The head of the family prepared a birch broom, soaking it in hot water, sprinkled kvass on it, and swirled it over hot stones until fragrant steam began to emanate from the broom, and the leaves became soft, but did not stick to the body. And only after that they began to wash and steam.

One of the ways to wash in Russia is a Russian stove

Public baths were built in cities. The first of them were erected by order of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. These were ordinary one-story buildings on the river bank, consisting of three rooms: a dressing room, a soap room and a steam room.

Everyone washed in such baths together: men, women, and children, causing amazement to foreigners who specially came to gaze at a spectacle unprecedented in Europe. “Not only men, but also girls, women of 30, 50 or more, run without any shame or conscience, just as God created them, and not only do not hide from strangers walking there, but also laugh at them with their immodesty “, wrote one such tourist. No less surprising to the visitors was how men and women, extremely steamed, ran naked from a very hot bathhouse and threw themselves into the cold water of the river.

The authorities turned a blind eye to such a folk custom, although with great dissatisfaction. It is not by chance that in 1743 a decree appeared according to which it was forbidden for men and women to steam together in commercial baths. But, as contemporaries recalled, such a ban remained mostly on paper. The final division occurred when they began to build baths, which provided for male and female sections.

Gradually, people with a commercial streak realized that baths could become a source of good income, and began to invest money in this business. Thus, the Sandunov Baths (built by the actress Sandunova), the Central Baths (owned by the merchant Khludov) and a number of other, less famous baths appeared in Moscow. In St. Petersburg, people loved to visit the Bochkovsky and Leshtokov baths. But the most luxurious baths were in Tsarskoe Selo.