Why Did Europe Stop Bathing For 300 Years?

For about 300 years, a lot of Europeans were scared of a hot bath. Not because they liked being dirty. Doctors genuinely believed warm water opened your pores and let disease straight into your body. So people found another way to stay clean, and it actually worked. In this video: why soaking in a bath was treated like a medical risk what the Black Death did to public bathhouses the Louis XIV "two baths in his life" story, and why it's probably exaggerated the dry rub-down and the linen shirt that did the cleaning for you laundry day with wood ash and stale urine why rich people showed off huge white ruffs and cuffs what all of this says about your own daily shower Chapters 0:00 The bath nobody wanted 0:42 Why doctors were scared of water 1:24 The Black Death and the bathhouses 2:09 Did Louis XIV really bathe twice? 2:33 The secret: linen 3:39 The morning dry rub-down 4:52 Laundry day was brutal 6:07 Why the rich wore giant white ruffs 6:39 What are you wearing right now? 7:46 What "clean" really means Sources and further reading Georges Vigarello, Concepts of Cleanliness Virginia Smith, Clean: A History of Personal Hygiene Ruth Goodman, How to Be a Tudor Paris Medical Faculty report on the plague (1348) Some details here are debated by historians, and where that's the case the video says so. #history #hygiene #funnyhistory