In 1347 the plague hit Europe.
Thirty to fifty percent of the population died. Doctors needed explanations, and they gave themselves one: bad air. Miasma. The disease came from vapors in the air.
And warm water — it opened the pores. So the miasma could penetrate into the body.
The public bathhouses closed. London had thirteen bathhouses in the 1200s. Augsburg had seventeen. Vienna had twenty-nine. Within a couple of generations they were nearly all gone.
People stopped bathing.
It’s not a metaphor. It’s literal. For two hundred years Europeans mainly washed their clothes, not their bodies. Perfume wasn’t a luxury — it was a strategy. The French court under Louis the Fourteenth was notorious for its smell.
It’s not “the Middle Ages were dirty because they were backward.” It’s “the science was wrong, and it took two hundred years to admit it.”
Think about that the next time someone tells you the current research is settled. It was settled in 1348 too. That certainty cost Europeans ten generations of hygiene.
When bathing habits finally returned in the 1700s, soap was something only the rich had access to. Hygiene had become a marker of privilege. The rich bathed. The poor stank. And there came a reason for it. That reason was a tax.
Sources og noter
- Wikipedia — Black Death — 1347-1351, dødstal
- Wikipedia — Miasma theory — videnskabelig konsensus indtil ~1860
- Smithsonian Magazine — A Brief History of Bathing — badehuse lukkede efter pesten
- London badehuse 1200-tallet: 13 documented. Augsburg 17. Wien 29. Tal varierer hos kilder.
- Ludvig XIVs hof: parfume som badeerstatning er veldokumenteret