Many years ago Vera and I sat watching a BBC TV programme that was all about the germs, fungi and small creatures which inhabit the surface of our skin and protect us against attack by harmful microbes. We both laughed when we realised that both of us were subconsciously scratching ourselves! I never forgot this programme and over the years made it my business to learn more about these essential matters.
Fast forward thirty years and I am sat having a conversation with a friend of mine, an American GP who worked for the Mayo Clinic, one of the most respected medical bodies in the world. He told me about a mini-epidemic he had come across when he realised he was getting an abnormal number of young men college students coming to his office complaining about dry, itching skin. He eventually realised what was causing it. A soap company was marketing a new brand of germicidal soap and they were concentrating on young men by suggesting that the cleaner you were, the more likely you were to attract the attention of the female sex. Some of them had been showering three times a day using what was in effect a powerful disinfectant. He alerted the patients to the damage they were doing to themselves and the queue of itchy young jocks at his door faded away.
When I was a lad, seventy years ago, we were taught that 'Cleanliness is next to Godliness' and encouraged to keep ourselves clean. Despite this, we only had one bath a week, always on Friday night. Time and time again as I interviewed informants to the Lancashire Textile Project I was told the same thing, Friday night was almost the universal bath night. I think that most of you will remember strong soaps like Lifebuoy, Wright's Coal Tar and Carbolic soaps. A good hot scrub with these once a week meant that we were not shunned by our friends!
Despite this of course, we were living in a much more dangerous world than today in terms of contamination in our environment. Apart from the constant pall of smoke from domestic and factory coal burning, the dust we breathed was full of infectious matter ranging from powdered horse muck from the street to the coughing and sneezing of people whose general health was nowhere near as good as it is today. Remember that this was before antibiotics and modern drugs, Tuberculosis, Scarlet Fever, Diphtheria and Measles were just a few of the diseases that were endemic. Some of our friends were put in isolation hospitals or even died so we were all aware of the dangers.
'Keeping clean' was seen as the main defence against infection and our mothers constantly washed and scrubbed to try to protect us. When I look back it is a wonder we survived let alone get to the stage where we have been described as 'The last Healthy Generation'. How can this be in a world where everything is far cleaner?
Stanley's Tar Soap
