preface
Western Europe, whether a hundred years ago or a hundred years later, is synonymous with development and advancement. When the Industrial Revolution broke out in Europe, China, once the world's number one, fell behind in comparison.
After the Opium War, the decadent and backward Qing Dynasty fell into a semi-colonial and semi-feudal situation, followed by the opening of treaty ports and the influx of foreigners.
Gentlemen in top hats and richly dressed ladies on the streets all show their advanced and civilized. In particular, in 1862, when the Japanese people visited Shanghai, they said this sentence:
The road is full of dung and mustard, the dirt is buried, the smell is overwhelming, and its filth is indescribable.
Backward, decaying, and dirty, modern China seems to have become a useless existence. But in reality, in some ways, China is not lagging behind, such as hygiene. Although Shanghai stinks, China is obviously much better than Europe in the Middle Ages and more than two hundred years after that.
The rumored elegant Middle Ages, in fact, the situation is that the noblewoman's skirt is in the toilet, the street is full of feces, and there is not even a foothold.
Medieval Europe: Stinky Sky
In 476 AD, the Western Roman Empire officially collapsed, and Western Europe entered the middle ages, that is, the Middle Ages, which lasted for the twelfth century. In medieval Europe, because of the extremely exquisite dress of the nobility, it was often regarded as a symbol of elegance.
But in fact, medieval Europe is a bit beyond your imagination. With the fall of the Roman Empire, a great existence gradually disappeared in medieval Europe, that is, the habit of bathing and the existence of baths.
To be precise, western Europe in the pre- and mid-Middle Ages still had the habit of bathing. What really labeled medieval Europe "dirty" and "dark" was the Black Death of the fourteenth century.
- Fear of the Black Death
The Black Death, also known as plague, was a potent infectious disease that spread rapidly through rats and fleas. When the Black Death broke out, the whole of Europe fell into panic, and the cat, as the natural enemy of the mouse, was regarded as the embodiment of Satan, resulting in fewer and fewer cats, and the rat became more rampant after the natural enemy was gone.
The plague, which lasted eight years, cost nearly a third of people their lives. Even after the plague, people still did not come out of the panic.
At that time, doctors believed that the Black Death broke out through skin contact with airborne germs, so they advised people to avoid skin-to-air contact as much as possible.
This suggestion gave rise to two practices, one of which was to wrap oneself in a garment that resembled a rice dumpling, as was the layer after layer of skirts of the noble ladies and the layers of clothing of the noble men; In addition, try not to take a bath.
They believe that bathing is essentially exposing the skin to air, increasing the risk of exposure to germs. And bathing will make people's pores stretch, which is tantamount to a very risky behavior; In addition, layers of dirt are piled up on the body, which is also an effective means to avoid skin contact with germs.
As a result, wearing more without bathing became a prevalence in the late Middle Ages and for the next two hundred years.
Even if he is a king, he only bathes once or twice a year; And those who were willing to take a bath more than ten times a year were already very clean at that time.
Not bathing not only makes the body full of dirt, but also causes the whole person to emit an unbearable odor. As a result, the perfumes we are familiar with are prevalent.
As early as 1,500 years BEFORE 1,500 BC, perfume appeared in Egypt, when Cleopatra also stipulated that public places should not be punished for not wearing perfume.
But until the sixteenth century, perfumes were not popular in Europe. What really brought it to the peak of the spice industry was the era of Louis XIV in the seventeenth century.
Although two centuries have passed since the Middle Ages, the European habit of not loving bathing has not changed. The unpleasant body odor was unbearable, so under the leadership of Louis XIV, perfume became an effective tool for people to cover the body odor.
- Influenced by Christianity
In addition to the reluctance to bathe for fear of the Black Death, another reason why medieval Europe became stinky was the existence of Christianity.
In the Christian church, people decide to bathe in order to wash away their sins. The fate of Christians is to wait for God's judgment after death, so washing away their sins in the middle of life is an impermissible existence.
For this reason, people who want to take a bath will be banned from bathing; Christians, on the other hand, take pride in not bathing. Under the influence of this thought, people do not like to bathe.
In addition to the stench of not bathing, the dirtiness of Europe stems from excrement on the ground.
Medieval Europe: Feces are all over the ground
The shanghai mentioned above in the late Qing Dynasty may not be acceptable to some people, but the latter is obviously much dirtier than in earlier Europe. Unlike China, which has traditionally treated manure as a "nutrient" for irrigated crops, medieval Europe only treated it as excrement.
Coincidentally, Europe in that period was very interesting, with the first and middle periods being territorial assemblages, and the later feudal states. But this shows that public welfare facilities that serve the public are a forward-looking concept for them.
This has led to an extreme scarcity of sewer systems. In the thirteenth century, London was the only city in England with a sewer system, and it had only one public toilet.
With no sewers, no way to reuse excrement, and no concept of public welfare, Europe's dirty state can be imagined.
Ordinary people go to the toilet, mostly looking for a hidden corner to urinate everywhere. The nobility is naturally distinguished from it, and basically has the existence of barrels or pots.
However, it is also difficult for dressed ladies to go to the toilet. Conditional will let the servant put a bucket or basin under the skirt to hold excrement, unconditionally can only go directly to the skirt to the toilet, and then let the servant clean up.
Here we will find that their excrement is filled in pots or barrels, but is not used, and there are no sewer facilities, where do these things go?
At that time, the streets and alleys, large and small rivers were full of feces, and some people who lived upstairs even directly took buckets and dumped them downstairs, so many people felt a "to the head" experience.
The incomparably bad experience naturally caused people to be dissatisfied, so in the case of repeated persuasion, and then the feces were dumped upstairs, it was necessary to shout three times to the outside to make people pay attention in advance.
In this case, the role of the top hat and umbrella seems to be highlighted.
This situation persisted until the first construction of the Palace of Versailles. When Louis XIII built it, he didn't think about the sewers at all, and the only toilet props that existed were still toilets.
This led to the early Palace of Versailles, where liturgy and feces coexisted, elegance and dirtiness.
End
In medieval Europe, dirt and darkness were not only reflected in cities. But it was the development of cities that gave birth to new interest groups, which then prompted Europe to enter capitalist life.
With this, there was a change in the city's appearance, and Europe at that time gradually became famous for its civilization and advancement.
Therefore, no matter which region or which country has a backward period, the same is true of developed Europe. When we rebuke our environment, we should also compare horizontally and look forward to seeing its gradually better future.