The Rumored Decline of Personal Hygiene

There is an idea that personal hygiene declined along with the fall of Rome in Western Europe. Unlike the Romans, this line of thinking goes, the Middle Ages constituted “a thousand years without a bath” (as one popular textbook summarizes). In fact, Medieval washing is a well documented practice, and you can read all about it in “Going Medieval,” a blog by Medievalist Dr. Eleanor Janega, who is the funniest historian in existence. In fact, aversion to warm water in bathing grew as the Middle Ages transitioned to the Early Modern period — the reason had to do with an assumption that disease spread through pores, which opened more in hotter water.