These Vintage Hygiene Practices Are the Very Opposite of Clean

We put together a list of some old hygiene facts that would make anyone thankful they're living in the modern age — even though some of these old hygiene habits are still in use! Check out the bizarre ways people used to get clean and overcome illnesses: some of these are gross, some of these are morbid, and all of these will surprise you.

We infuse the scents of flowers into perfumes and cleaning products because they smell so good to us. While scientific understanding and industrial manufacturing techniques have dramatically improved our ability to stimulate our olfactory glands with the touch of a spray or lighting of a candle, the love we have for these floral scents is nothing new. Ancient peoples, for example, used to use flowers to mask their unpleasant body odor with a bouquet held or tied close to their bodies.

While the rich and famous today all have gorgeous tans that show that they can afford to wallow around in the sun all day long, back in the day pale skin was a sign of wealth, as it meant you didn't labor out in the sun. People would color their skin with makeup that would often poison them for the lead content, but also try to induce paleness by eating chalk. Even though it probably won't work unless it makes you sick and you get pale, at least chalk's less toxic!

Indeed, the only use we have for urine is for tests at the doctor or to treat jellyfish stings - which doesn't work - but before we could use inorganic substances to synthesize chemicals such as ammonia, which is used to this day in cleaning products, we used to get them from an organic source: pee. Also known as chamber lye, aged and fermented urine (lant) was used as laundry detergent. Its use in tanning leather was perhaps the least stomach-wretching, as they also added it to ales and glazed it on pastries.

Sodium bicarbonate, commonly known as baking soda, is used today by many toothpaste brands as the active ingredient for whitening products, but the fact is that this chemical compound has been known for this effect since ancient times. This one ingredient is sometimes the only thing toothpaste of different eras and cultures had in common. Although the Romans used it, for example, they preferred to mix it with mouse brains for a slightly different flavor than we're used to.