Fast History: Have You Ever Wondered What the World Used to Smell Like? (Patreon)

People romanticize the past a lot. Including rampant sexism, racism, elitism, and other -isms- that oppressed and dominated, there's something else people don't think about when discussing history. What did the world smell like? While places certainly haven't kept historical records of their smells, there are plenty of anecdotes and bits of trivia that give you a general idea of what things may have smelled like back in the day. For starters, tampons didn't become commercially available until 1933 (though pads had been available since 1888), and before that women made do with whatever leaves, cloths, and other unmentionables made sense at the time. But that's not where the nasal assaults end. Once you read this, you'll be happy you live in this day and age. 

BODY ODOR

In Ancient Rome, people didn't really use soap. Hard to make into something that wasn't scathingly harsh on the skin, the Romans opted to make use of the Strigil. Resembling a small rake, people would cover themselves in oil and dust, sweat vigorously from an aiding activity, then use the Strigil to scrape the dirt off. Lastly they would dip into a room temperature bath, then a hot one, and then a cold one. Though this is believed to be more helpful than one may think (it gets you pretty clean!), this lengthy and expensive process was only for the rich. So think about all of those people with no access to such a thing. 

In Christianity, there aren't many explicit teachings regarding hygiene (when compared to Judaism and Islam). In the early years of the religion, being Holy meant forgoing all luxuries-and cleanliness was on par with sex and food. Many monks and saints didn't wash, because it was believed that the more you smelled, the holier you were. 

European people had horrible breath. They ignored rotting teeth, and when they had enough money they paid the local barber to remove them with crude pliers. Sometimes they'd use toothpicks and water to clean out their mouths or chew on dried herbs like mint or rosemary for a freshening effect.

Europe, compared to the rest of the world, at large reeked of body odor for about 500 years. For a while during the middle ages, people bathed fairly often. During the black plauge the King of France asked doctors to figure out why so many people were succumbing to the epedimic. Doctors claimed that people who took baths and opened their pores were more likely to catch the bubonic plauge. So people became terrified of getting in water. Think about all of the sex and excrement. Think of the smell. Not pleasant. 

Whenever wigs were in fashion throughout the ages, you can guarantee that these animal hair coverings were infested with lice and reeked of sweat. Also? They were shaped with animal fat by wig makers, which meant things got putrid, fast.

People wore perfume to avoid smelling other peoples scents. Perfumers flourished in Europe, especially during the 17th century. Heavy ass perfumes and colognes mixed with open air fish and vegetable markets, body odor, and waste. Gross. 

Waste.... Everywhere

People kept chamber pots under their beds, and in some cities they'd dump the waste directly into the streets.

In New York City before a health department or civil effort to promote cleanliness was created, horse and chamberpot waste from tenements littered the streets and boiled under the beaming summer sun or became winter snow sludge. 

In Tudor England, house toilets were rarely cleaned or emptied. The smells were almost as bad as the chances of catching a disease or infection after using one. 

Peasants didn't have the luxury of shitting in chamber pots, so instead they went wherever they could... including  in rivers and lakes or in the woods.

Open Range Grazing in the American West meant cattle waste assaulted the landscape (while also fertilizing). 

Diets Were Different

Right now I'm reading up on the history of food, and from what Im gathering so far, the diets of everyone across the world were MUCH different than now. Before the advent and vast availability of supermarkets in the mid 20th century, people ate less processed foods and more things that existed on a scale from fresh to rotting. The smells of Japanese fish markets, Indian spice bazaars, Chicago slaughterhouses were more prevalent and pungent. Imagine being surrounded by people who rarely bathed (if ever) who constantly chomped on odor promoting foods like onions, fish, pickled delicacies, and eggs. It also didn't help that for a large chunk of history, people hardly drank water because accessing a pure non deadly food source was extremely challenging. Perspiration and urine must have been rank.