LTC3 Hygenic Roman Baths

[Lupo]

Originally Posted by Purple Haze

The Romans still managed to set a standard for hygene that wouldn't be equalled for ~1500 years.

This is likely. Nevertheless, it appears the "bath once a year" thing is largely a myth, or at least something restricted to certain places and/or times. E.g. where the climate was cold, or there were strong taboos against nudity...

For example, it sounds strange that people living in hot, wet climates would not bath themselves in rivers, lakes and the like.
Why wouldn't they? If it's hot, bathing or at least "splashing" oneself with fresh, unheated water is not displeasing at all. If only to remove some of the dirt and sweat.

The same goes for coastal and river populations - if you are a fisherman or a rice farmer (or even just if you do the laundry at the river^^) you are pretty much forced to bathe and to let your clothes dry... (even if you are not a good swimmer).
Even many dogs and other non-acquatic animals like to swim and "bathe" as soon as they have a chance to do so. Little children loves to bathe. Why low-tech humans should be so dirt-loving?

The following (unsourced) websites argue that people in the Middle Ages bathed more than we think, and more than "their descendants up to the 19th century":

http://www.triviumpublishing.com/art...iddleages.html
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_did_pe...in_middle_ages
http://www.medieval-life.net/bathing.htm

The last one argues that
"as the forests were depleted, firewood became expensive and the rising costs of heating the water forced most of the bathhouses to close. (...) By the mid-1300s, only the very wealthy could afford firewood for hot water in the winter. The rest of the population was forced to be dirty most of the time."
(Note that the mid-1300s is the very end of the Middle Ages; the last century of a millennium-long era. And that many, if not most, countries do not have any appreciable "winter", think about the southern mediterranean, West Asia, North Africa, India, Southeast Asia...)

Wikipedia has a section on the Western history of Bathing:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathing#Western_history
It lists a few "practical" and ethical issues which made bathing less and less common just after the Middle Ages.

The wikianswers site, above, says that
"The Danes are described as generally bathing once a week; the Anglo-Saxons less often."

If I were a Dane in the middle age, in freezing climate with no hot water easily available, I really doubt I would bathe more than once a week. Actually I'd say that someone who bathed once a week in that conditions, was quite brave and/or really into personal hygiene.

So perhaps the oppositon to bathing was typical of Anglo-saxons in certain times, and it has been popularized as "universal of everybody in the middle ages" because of the worldwide influence of Anglo-saxon culture...
Just as the modern image of fantasy is largely shaped on British middle-age, and most westerners if you say "middle age" will think about Robin Hood and green forests rather than, say, Italian Comuni or Moorish Spain...
But that's just a conjecture on my part, if somebody knows more about history of bathing across different countries and ages (and about the hygiene practices of modern low-tech societies populations), I am ready to be corrected.