The Vigilante wrote:It has more to do with religion and stuff than actual advancement of civilization. People bathed in the early Middle Ages because the Catholic Church wasn't on their backs much, and there were a few roman public baths still up and running. When the Church was powerful enough to throw their retarded weigth around such matters, they simply closed down those baths, and Western civilization basically traded hygiene for perfumes...
It wasn’t the church. There is a technical problem with medieval (pre steam technology) heating systems that can consistently bring significant amounts of water to a boil. You need a lot of wood to do this. If you have a good population that likes their hot baths I’m talking a real lot of wood.
Google is your friend: Google “medieval deforestation.” This isn’t rocket science you know. Deforestation
So in other words the age of sailing ships led to the decline of fuel for hot water. This caused the decline in hot baths. Once this happened pseudo-science (in the field of medicine) which started to link disease with bad air started a bizarre implication that taking baths was a major cause of disease and this caused the problems in the 17th and 18th centuries. Remember it is these centuries that provided most of the windows into “medieval” life for most of the 19th and 20th centuries and they were dominated by feelings of self superiority and general loathing for the primitive times that existed before them.
Google is your friend: Google “medieval deforestation.” This isn’t rocket science you know. Deforestation
Also forget the “public baths” as the medieval man used a barrel or a basin for the babies. About.Com: Medieval HistoryFrom 1100 to 1500 AD significant deforestation took place in Western Europe as a result of the expanding human population. The large-scale building of wooden sailing ships by European (coastal) naval owners since the 15th century for exploration, colonisation, slave trade – and other trade on the high seas and (often related) naval warfare (the failed invasion of England by the Spanish Armada in 1559 and the battle of Lepanto 1571 are early cases of huge waste of prime timber; each of Nelson's Royal navy war ships at Trafalgar had required 6,000 mature oaks) and piracy meant that whole woody regions were over-harvested, as in Spain, where this contributed to the paradoxical weakening of the domestic economy since Columbus' discovery of America made the colonial activities (plundering, mining, cattle, plantations, trade, etc.) predominant.
So in other words the age of sailing ships led to the decline of fuel for hot water. This caused the decline in hot baths. Once this happened pseudo-science (in the field of medicine) which started to link disease with bad air started a bizarre implication that taking baths was a major cause of disease and this caused the problems in the 17th and 18th centuries. Remember it is these centuries that provided most of the windows into “medieval” life for most of the 19th and 20th centuries and they were dominated by feelings of self superiority and general loathing for the primitive times that existed before them.