The History of Baths

Ritual bathing Evolves to be Public bathing

After the fall of the Roman Empire in 467 A.D. the habit of public bathing declined all over Europe. The lack of bathing had a detrimental effect on public health as it was unsanitary conditions that contributed heavily to the great plagues of the middle ages, especially the plague of black death in the fourteenth century. The other major contributing factor was witch hunting and the attitude to cats. When a witch was tried, it was normally not by a court but by a witching chair. A chair lowered into a pond and unfortunately, for the alleged witch it was a heads you lose, tails you have definitely lost situation. If the witch drowned during the dunking, she was declared to be innocent of the charge of witchcraft, but if she lived she was guilty. The punishment for being a witch was to be burnt at the stake, but often her pet cat was burnt with her and that led to a dearth of cats and consequently more rats and the plague spread unchecked.

During the 17th century, cleanliness and bathing started to come back into vogue in much of Europe. However outside of Europe bathing was still a daily ritual in medieval Japan.

Next Article