| It can take a minimum of one full month to create a bar of hand-made soap from start to finish.
How many times do we take for granted : when we use soap of any kind ?
- Washing our clothes ?
- Washing our hair ?
- Washing our body ?
- Cleaning the bath ?
- Washing the car etc, etc, etc, etc ?………………………………
All of the above entail a process to make these common daily necessities happen.
The early Greeks bathed for aesthetic reasons and apparently did not use soap. Instead, they cleaned their bodies with blocks of clay, sand, pumice and ashes, then anointed themselves with oil, and scraped off the oil and dirt with a metal instrument known as a strigil. They also used oil with ashes. Clothes were washed without soap in streams.
Soap got its name, according to an ancient Roman legend, from Mount Sapo, where animals were sacrificed. Rain washed a mixture of melted animal fat, or tallow, and wood ashes down into the clay soil along the Tiber River. Women found that this clay mixture made their wash cleaner with much less effort.
As Roman civilization advanced, so did bathing. The first of the famous Roman baths, supplied with water from their aqueducts, was built about 312 B.C. The baths were luxurious, and bathing became very popular. By the second century A.D., the Greek physician, Galen, recommended soap for both medicinal and cleansing purposes.
The ruins at Pompeii revealed a soap factory complete with finished bars.
After the fall of Rome in 467 A.D. and the resulting decline in bathing habits, much of Europe felt the impact of filth upon public health. This lack of personal cleanliness and related unsanitary living conditions contributed heavily to the great plagues of the Middle Ages, and especially to the Black Death of the 14th century.
It wasn't until the 17th century that cleanliness and bathing started to come back into fashion in much of Europe.
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