After a busy day at work, I came home loose and loose and took a big hot bath, what a pleasant thing. Moreover, people's awareness of hygiene is generally enhanced, and even if the conditions are poor, they have to take a bath from time to time. In ancient times, the conditions were too poor, and sometimes it was difficult to eat a meal when encountering social unrest. But the matter of bathing, as long as there are small rivers and lakes, will not fall. Today I want to talk about bathing in ancient times.
In the middle of the 17th century, the land of China was in the war years of the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, and in the distant Western Europe, there were constant wars of large and small, and the life of their people at this time was not very good. But the royal nobles who ruled the country were getting more and more elegant every day. King Louis XIV of the Bourbon dynasty was one of the most famous monarchs of Western Europe during this period.
Louis XIV was born in 1638. Louis XIII died in 1643 and reigned at the age of 5 until his death in 1715, a reign of 72 years and 110 days, the longest reigning king in the world, 11 years longer than the Kangxi Emperor of China.
Of course, because the king was young, the Bourbon dynasty was run by his mother Anna and Cardinal Mazaran, who officially ruled in 1661 and called himself the Sun King. But the Sun King had not bathed several times in his life, and his body was so smelly that even his concubines hated him.
Although wars are frequent, and the people are too poor to take a bath, it is understandable that the royal family is not even able to afford to supply a bath tub and bath water, which is really one of the reasons. In the 17th century, the level of science and technology in Western European countries was backward, and ordinary people could not even afford to build iron tools at home, and it was particularly troublesome to want to boil water. The royal family is not much better, the kings and nobles only have enough to take a bath once every three months, and it is common for the people to wash only once a year.
In this way, the whole Bourbon dynasty was stinky. But in an environment where the whole country stinks, Louis XIV can make people smell his stench from ten meters away. His lover, Madame De Montespon, also complained that his terrible disgusting smell could make people unable to eat. This was what Louis XIV volunteered, because he thought it was good for the body not to bathe.
As early as the middle of the 14th century, tens of millions of people died in Western Europe from the "Black Death", not to mention the low medical technology at that time, even now, doctors are helpless against the "Black Death". Doctors at that time, suffering from not being able to find a solution, attributed the "Black Death" to airborne transmission, advertising that they would not be infected without bathing, on the grounds that the pores of the skin would open for breathing when bathing.
This statement will certainly be laughed at now, but the people at that time believed that they would not get sick without bathing, and even Louis XIV was convinced of it. Before his countless few baths, he also consulted a doctor to check his body; after taking a bath in fear, he also had to check whether he was sick.
The last important reason is because of religious belief, the Catholic Church at that time believed that not bathing is to retain everything original in the body, and the farther away from God you are once washed, so the more dirt you have on your body, the more you can touch God. Louis XIV insisted on not bathing for 64 years, only to be one step closer to God.
In addition to Louis XIV himself, the mother of King Henry IV of France was ordained a saint for the sake of this faith without bathing for the rest of her life; Saint Abraham was ordained a saint without washing his face and feet for fifty consecutive years. In the case of being brainwashed by Catholic thought, people think that it is natural not to bathe.
In 1715, Louis XIV died smelly. Don't look at the fact that he lived to be 77 years old, his later life was not good, and his illness, especially skin diseases, was very serious. I don't know if he realized that he was sick probably because he didn't take a bath for a long time. In short, we are now socially developed in science and technology, the level of medical and health care is also very high, and no one believes the myth of "no bathing and no disease".