History of Soap

Belle's Botanicals
PMB 141
236 W. East Avenue, Suite A
Chico, CA 95926
(530) 345-9898

The History of Soap

Legend has it that soap got its name from Mount Sapo, a hill in Rome on which animals were ritually sacrificed. At the bottom of the hill ran the Tiber River, where people would gather daily to wash their laundry. Rain water would run down the hill into the river, carrying with it a clay-like substance of animal fats and wood ash residue from the sacrifices. One day, someone made the connection that the clay mixed in with the river's water produced a foamy substance that made their laundry cleaner.

Bathing was first popularized in Western culture by the famous Roman baths, the first of which was built in 312 bc. But at the time soap was not a part of the bathing ritual and did not become related to personal hygiene until the second century. Before soap became a part of the bathing ritual items like milk, sand, oil, herbs, flower petals and other various items were the cleansing materials used. Rubbed on the body, they removed dirt, grime and dead skin. Its not until Galen of Pergamom, one of the most outstanding physicians of the distant past after Hypocrites, who recognized soap for its medicinal and cleansing properties, that the connection was made.

Unfortunately, after the fall of the Roman Empire and during the Dark Ages, bathing and basically any activities that focused on the human body became synonymous with evil doings. The concept of personal hygiene and the use of soap specifically for that purpose went into serious decline. As a result of the unsanitary living conditions, plague, disease and death became rampant throughout all of Europe.

Soap slowly began to resurface in certain parts of 8th century Italy and Spain, and later in 13th century France and then England. The advancements of a couple of very important French scientists in the 18th and 19th centuries further encouraged the production and use of soap. Nichols Leblanc patented a process in 1791 for making alkali (a necessary element in soap-making) from salt, and Louis Pasteur established the connection between bacteria and disease in the 1800s and hence the necessity to fight bacteria.

Sources for the history of soap from "Making Soaps & Scents" By Catherine Bardey.

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