Bath and body products have been around for centuries.
The earliest known soap manufacturing was found to be in Pompeii in 70 A.D. Queen Nefertiti used facial masks made of milk, flowers and honey. Baths of milk were made popular by Cleopatra and carried on for centuries by the royalty. Fragrant body oils are even mentioned in the Bible.
The most commonly held belief is that soap gets its name from Mount Sapo, a mountain in Rome where animals were ritualistically sacrificed. When it rained it would wash down the animal fats and wood ash residue to the Tiber River at the bottom of Mount Sapo. When the people washed their clothing in the Tiber River after the rains they noticed that a foamy substance formed and made their clothes cleaner. Thus, the basis of soap and some of its uses were said to have begun.
The first Roman bath was built in 312 BC and made bathing popular in Western culture, however soap wasn’t really a part of the bathing ritual at that time. They primarily used milk, sand, oils, herbs and flower petals for cleansing the body.
Later, during the Dark Ages, bathing and pretty much anything that had anything to do with personal hygiene became synonymous with evil doing. Personal hygiene took a nosedive and disease skyrocketed. Finally in the 1800’s Louis Pasteur made the connection between bacteria and disease, which lead to the beginning of understanding the need for cleanliness.
Since Nicholas Leblanc, a French scientist, patented a process for making alkali, a necessary component for making soap, in 1791, and Pasteur’s discovery, soap slowly began to make a comeback. As the chemicals and refinement grew so did the use of soap. As the use of soap grew so did the technology used to produce it, which in turn has improved it and made it an item that no longer has to be produced in the home as it was in the earliest times.
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