Posted on 06/25/2021 9:48:45 AM PDT by Red Badger
At the onset of the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, store shelves were quickly emptied of toilet paper, revealing the commodity’s prominent, yet unspoken role in modern-day society. Although humans have cleaned their bottoms for as long as they have walked the Earth, “three-ply” and “extra-soft” didn’t always describe toilet hygiene. Before the introduction of mass-produced, commercially available toilet paper in the mid-1800s and the continued improvements made into the early 20 century, people relied on less luxurious ways to wipe their bums.
From Seashells to Communal Sponges Through history, local customs and climate often dictated how anal hygiene was carried out. Social hierarchy also had in impact on toilet habits. What’s clear is that humans in all time periods have used a variety of natural tools and materials to clean themselves. In very ancient times, wiping with stones and other natural materials and rinsing with water or snow was common. Some cultures opted for seashells and animal furs.
A sponge on a stick, known as tersorium or xylospongium.
D. Herdemerten/CC BY 3.0
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“The most famous example of ancient ‘toilet paper’ comes from the Roman world [during the first century A.D.] and Seneca's story about the gladiator who killed himself by going into a toilet and shoving the communal sponge on a stick down his throat,” says Erica Rowan, an environmental archaeologist and a lecturer in classical archaeology at the University of London. The sponges, known as tersoriums, may have been used once or cleaned in a bucket of vinegar or salt water and reused, or they may have been used more like toilet brushes than toilet paper.
Beyond the communal sponge, Greco-Romans also used moss or leaves and pieces of ceramic known as pessoi to perform cleansing. Pieces of pessoi may have started as ostraca, broken bits of pottery that often had the names of enemies inscribed on them—a proverbial way to soil upon adversaries.
Small fragments of cloth found in a sewer in Herculaneum, Italy, one of the towns buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D., could have been used as another form of toilet paper, although Rowan points out, “Cloth was made by hand in antiquity so using cloth to wipe your bum would have been quite a decadent activity. It's the equivalent to using the softest and most expensive three-ply today.”
In 1992, archaeologists discovered 2,000-year-old hygiene sticks, known as salaka, cechou and chugi, in latrines at Xuanquanzhi, a former Han Dynasty military base in China that existed along the Silk Road. The instruments, cut from bamboo and other wood, resembled spatulas. The ends were wrapped in cloth and contained traces of preserved fecal matter.
The Introduction of Paper as a Wipe Although paper originated in China in the second century B.C., the first recorded use of paper for cleansing is from the 6th century in medieval China, discovered in the texts of scholar Yen Chih-Thui. In 589 A.D, he wrote, “Paper on which there are quotations or commentaries from the Five Classics or the names of sages, I dare not use for toilet purposes.”
By the early 14th century, the Chinese were manufacturing toilet paper at the rate of 10 million packages of 1,000 to 10,000 sheets annually. In 1393, thousands of perfumed paper sheets were also produced for the Hongwu Emperor’s imperial family.
Paper became widely available in the 15th century, but in the Western world, modern commercially available toilet paper didn’t originate until 1857, when Joseph Gayetty of New York marketed a "Medicated Paper, for the Water-Closet,” sold in packages of 500 sheets for 50 cents. Before his product hit the market, Americans improvised in clever ways.
"The greatest necessity of the age! Gayetty's medicated paper for the water-closet."
Library of Congress
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Barry Kudrowitz, associate professor and director of product design at the University of Minnesota, has studied the history and use of toilet paper. Through the 1700s, corncobs were a common toilet paper alternative. Then, newspapers and magazines arrived in the early 18th century. “The ‘legend’ goes that people were primarily using the Sears catalog in outhouses, but when the catalog began to be printed in glossy paper people needed to find a replacement,” says Kudrowitz. Americans also nailed the Farmer’s Almanac onto outhouse walls, leading the company to pre-drill the legendary “hole” into their publication in 1919.
The first perforated toilet paper rolls were introduced in 1890, and by 1930 toilet paper was finally manufactured “splinter free.” Today, softer, stronger and more absorbent describe the toilet paper found in American homes.
Toilet Paper Hoarding Shifts in attitudes and practices over time, including those associated with bathroom habits and hygiene, can help explain why people in modern society feel compelled to have toilet paper on hand, particularly during a crisis. For instance, in the Middle Ages, people considered human waste both good—being valuable and worth money (excellent for crops)—and bad—filthy and disgusting (excellent for humor and insults).
“The good is little accepted today, despite endeavors to [re]use excrement for energy,” says Susan Signe Morrison, a professor at Texas State University and author of Excrement in the Late Middle Ages: Sacred Filth and Chaucer’s Fecopoetics.
A Roman latrine built in stone around AD 124, in part of the Roman province of Britannia.
English Heritage/Heritage Images/Getty Images
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In ancient Rome, public toilets consisted of stone or marble slabs with a series of holes in them. There were no dividers and therefore no privacy. People ended up (quite literally) sitting right next to each other and sharing the communal sponge. Now, most Americans would be embarrassed at the mere thought of running out of toilet paper.
“It’s psychological,” says Morrison. “We hoard toilet paper because we fear having to face our poo. If we run out of toilet paper, how will we wipe our bottoms?”
Diet has a lot to do with it as well. High protein is the way to ‘go’...............................
It’s Friday..................
I totally agree. Once you try it, you don’t like not having one.
I pass by Tremont Street regularly. Next time I see #27 I’ll think of the invention of all ages! ;-)
The 2nd Amendment protects you.................. for now.................
Sit vs. Squat
While Americans and other Westerners have always sat on the toilet, people in Asia and Africa squat
when they go. In these cultures, people consider squatting to poop a more natural position than sitting.
The problem with sitting is that it keeps the kink in your lower bowel. That forces you to work harder
to push out the poop. Squatting relaxes your puborectalis muscle more and straightens out your colon,
giving the poop a straight route out. As a result, you can go more easily with less straining.
The colored TP was destroyed by the white supremacist TP.
Tongs, cantilevers, nunchaku, unbarked tree limbs, corkscrews, corn cobs, tableware, candlesticks, pineapples, banana peels, palm fronds, nutcrackers, wood rasps, spurs, hairbrushes, toothbrushes, potrzebies, and veeblefetzers.
“Diet has a lot to do with it as well. High protein is the way to ‘go”
Yep, I am on a veggie and fruit diet to lose weight to lower my bp. Pooping is a mess with that diet. Takes a 1/4 roll of tp to clean. I don’t even wipe anymore-just go straight to shower and wash off.
High protein diet and really strenous work and little to no wiping.
Two of the worst places I’ve used were in m**ic*...in the poorer towns in the countryside.
One was a woven reed surrounded area with a hole in the ground. On top of the whole was a hole was a 3x4 foot piece of wood with a big hole in it. One straddled and squatted and squeezed. For t.p....old novela type comic books strewn on the dirt floor.
2nd one in the town square...a closed raised closet with a worn out wooden seat with a hole. Not too bad, but the whole back side of the closet was exposed below the seat level. So one could actually watch the physics of the drop from behind the closet.
Remember going to pasadena rose parade two days later in an area with beautiful buildings, paved roads, private running water toilets and saying “ why is everybody complaining so much and so unhappy with what they have or don’t have?”
Potrzebies! Don’t forget the poiuyt!
Maybe the three seashells would work...
bump
Medieval Europe used leaves and grass. Lords had servants in charge of delivering fresh grass for the toilet.
They still do......................
You can eat meat, just no fat, or very little. And the lefties want us to stop eating meat....................
Years ago made a trip to Japan and spent a couple days at my Japanese friends’ house.
They had a Panasonic heated toilet seat that would wash and dry you!
Over is the right way.
Under is a sacrilege.
You can eat meat, just no fat, or very little. And the lefties want us to stop eating meat...............
Raises bp too much. I plan to go back to meat when my bp and weight come down.
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