Five facts about hygiene in medieval times: A time without toilet paper

A look at hygiene in the Middle Ages is fascinating and shocking at the same time - it was a time when standards of cleanliness and personal hygiene were far from our modern ideas. UAportal has prepared the top 5 facts about medieval hygiene.

Room pots

In past eras, women relied on chamber pots to collect waste during the night. After use, the contents of the pots were carelessly thrown off balconies or out of windows, accompanied by a friendly exclamation of "garde loo," meaning "watch out for the water."

Nosebags for masking odor

Imagine a small scented pouch filled with flowers and fragrances that you could hold up to your nose when faced with the constant smell on the streets. Such nasal pouches were once commonplace, allowing men and women to tolerate and temporarily escape the unbearable odors permeating public places.

Read also: How ordinary people survived winter and kept warm in the Middle Ages

Lack of toilet paper

Before the advent of the familiar toilet paper, the lack of an available extra roll created a dilemma for former bathroom users. In those distant times, people used leaves, moss, scraps of cloth or even hay as a substitute for bathroom towels. More privileged people used luxurious sheep's wool for this purpose.

The plight of public toilets

As strange as it may sound, bathing in public places was a popular pastime in the 13th century; however, hygienic practices were far from ideal. Due to the scarcity of firewood to heat water to a comfortable temperature, people resorted to using the same water for bathing in succession.

Urine energy: laundry solution

The Romans believed that urine had stain-removing properties. Surprisingly, up until the Middle Ages, people used a mixture of urine and ashes as a means of getting rid of stubborn stains.

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