Medieval Europe's Dirty Truth

Why Medieval Europeans Were Afraid to Bathe

In the 14th century, a physician in Paris advised his patients to wash their hands and face every day. He advised them to wash the rest of their body as little as possible. Bathing, he wrote, opened the pores. Open pores let in bad air. Bad air caused disease. The healthy body was a closed body. The closed body was a clean body. The open body was a body waiting to get sick.

The physician was not ignorant. He was trained in the best medical theory of his time. The theory came from Galen, from Hippocrates, from the Greek and Roman physicians who had been the authorities on medicine for a thousand years. The theory said that health was a balance of four humors: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. Anything that disturbed the balance could cause illness. Bathing, especially with hot water, disturbed the balance. It opened the pores, released the humors, made the body vulnerable.

The people who followed this advice were not dirty. They were careful. They were doing what their physicians told them to do. They were trying to stay healthy. The fact that they were also, by modern standards, unwashed is not the point. The point is that they had reasons for what they did. The reasons were not superstition. They were the best medical knowledge of the time.

What Everyone Knows

The medieval European is often imagined as a figure who never bathed, who lived in filth, who was ignorant of basic hygiene. The image is reinforced by popular culture, by films, by the assumption that people in the past were simply less civilized than we are. The medieval European is a cautionary figure, an example of how far we have come.

What is less often emphasized is that the medieval European had a theory of cleanliness. It was not the same as our theory. It was based on a different understanding of the body, of disease, of the relationship between the person and the environment. The theory was wrong, by modern standards. But it was not stupid.

What History Actually Shows

The medical theory that dominated Europe for a thousand years was humorism. The four humors needed to be balanced. When they were balanced, the body was healthy. When they were unbalanced, the body was sick. The physician's job was to restore the balance. Bloodletting, purging, diet, exercise—these were the tools. Bathing was also a tool. But bathing was risky. It could open the pores, release humors, cause imbalance. The risk was not imagined. It was part of the theory.

The theory was not without empirical support. People who bathed in cold water did sometimes get sick. People who bathed in hot water did sometimes get sick. The physicians observed this. They did not have germ theory. They did not know about bacteria. They had the theory of humors. It explained what they saw. It was wrong. But it was not irrational.

The practical concerns were also real. Water was not clean. Rivers and streams were polluted. Wells were contaminated. The water that people used for bathing was often the same water that they used for drinking, for washing clothes, for disposing of waste. Heating water required fuel, which was expensive. Bathing was a luxury. It was also a risk.

The Part That Got Buried

The idea that medieval Europeans did not bathe is a myth. They bathed. They bathed less often than we do, but they bathed. The wealthy had private baths. The poor bathed in rivers, in streams, in the public bathhouses that existed in most cities. The bathhouses were regulated by the authorities. They were places where people went to wash, to socialize, to be seen. They were also places where disease spread. The physicians who warned against bathing were not wrong about the risk. The bathhouses were dangerous. People did get sick there.

The church's role in the aversion to bathing has been exaggerated. The church did not forbid bathing. It warned against excessive bathing, against the immorality that could accompany it, against the vanity that it encouraged. The church was not against cleanliness. It was against the idea that cleanliness was a virtue in itself. The body was not to be worshipped. It was to be cared for. The care of the body was a duty. The obsession with the body was a sin.

The Ripple Effect

The theory of humors began to decline in the 17th century, as new theories of disease emerged. The discovery of bacteria in the 19th century made germ theory the dominant explanation for illness. The old theory of humors was abandoned. The practices that had been based on it were abandoned as well. Bathing became a public health measure. The people who had been warned against opening their pores were now told to open them every day.

The medieval Europeans were wrong about the danger of bathing. But they were not wrong about the risk. The water they bathed in was dangerous. The bathhouses they went to were dangerous. The physicians who warned them were not ignorant. They were working with the knowledge they had. The knowledge was wrong. The caution was not.

The Line That Says It All

The medieval Europeans who avoided full-body bathing were not dirty, they were not superstitious, they were not ignorant—they were following the advice of the best physicians of their time, who told them that bathing opened the pores and let in disease, and the physicians were not wrong that the water they bathed in was dangerous, and the bathhouses they bathed in were dangerous, and the people who bathed in them did sometimes get sick—they were just wrong about why.