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Bathroom Hydrotherapy Part 1
Soap made with wood ash lye or potash produces a soft soap, actually resembling a brown jelly dispensed with a ladle. To manufacture a sold soap you need to add salt. Unfortunately in the new colonies salt was a precious commodity, more precious than the valuable soap, it was needed to preserve food. It was only when the manufactured soap became hard as a result of the addition of salt that modern soap can be seen. It was often scented at this stage with oils such as lavender, wintergreen, or caraway and these additions made it resemble toilet soap, as we know it today.
However, soap was made in a large wooden box, and sold by weight, rather than in individual bars. Individually made bars of soap were not common until the middle of the nineteenth century. The fact that the first patent granted in the New World was for Pearlash used in the manufacture of home soaps was testament to its value, it was not usual for it to be exported to England. However, that trade did decline when caustic soda became cheaper, and brine was made from the leblanc process eliminating the need for salt. The availability of the by product sodium hydroxide, changed the soap making industry in a dramatic way. Sodium alkalis make hard soap without the necessity to add common salt to effect the change. The other big advantage was the alkali needed for soap making no longer required the task of felling acres of trees, burning the wood, leaching the ashes, later evaporating the water from the lye, and then burning off the impurities.
Once the manufacture of soap was made easier, it became more popular. The habit of bathing came back into fashion and the consumption of soap increased exponentially in the 19th century. Soap became of age as a modern product in the Victorian times as it moved finally and irreversibly from a cottage industry to an industrial process.
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