BATH NIGHT
Posted: 23 Apr 2026, 01:05
BATH NIGHT
23 August 2002
Your mother did lots of good things for you but one of the most important, and essential to your survival, is that when you were born she gave your skin a population of microbes, fungi and antibiotics which have been at work all your life acting as a first defence against infections which are constantly attacking your skin. Under normal circumstances these wee beasties thrive and reproduce and keep up the level of protection you need all your life. That is, it used to, unfortunately there are signs that things are changing.
I was talking to Ken Sansome, one of my medical mates in America, and we got on to the subject of personal hygiene. He said that one of the changes he has noted in American society during his long career is that young people especially believe that they have to shower two or three times a day using very strong bactericidal soaps. One of the most popular of these is called ‘Spring Fresh’ and is very popular with the lads. Ken told me that he knows immediately if someone is using it because whatever the scent is, he is allergic to it and starts sneezing as soon as they enter his office.
There have been some interesting scientific studies on this subject. They suggest that we are getting too obsessive about hygiene and that the benign population on our skin can be damaged by too much washing, particularly when strong bactericidal soaps are used. Another study suggests that one of the best things we could do for young children is let them eat a spoonful of dirt every now and again. Exposure to bacteria is what encourages our bodies to manufacture antibodies which protect our systems. All this got me to thinking. I remembered the number of times during my working life when I have eaten my sandwiches without having had the chance to wash my hands, was I unwittingly building up my resistance?
Seventy years ago in Barlick there were no showers, bathrooms or hot running water and having a bath in most houses was a big production. The tin bath which hung on a nail in the back yard all week was brought into the kitchen, placed on the hearth rug in front of the fire and filled with hot water out of the side boiler if you had one. Failing this, you boiled plenty of water on the fire or the gas stove. Everyone in the house used the same water, children first, then mother and father, every now and again the water was warmed up with another kettle of boiling water. When all had finished, the water was bailed out of the bath with a lading tin until father could lift it and pour the remainder down the sink. If you were really poor, you borrowed your neighbour’s bath. All this palaver meant that it only happened once a week, almost always on Friday night. I’ve always thought that the sewage works, or Waste Water Treatment Facility as it is called today, must have been a very busy place on Fridays!
Add to this another circumstance, there were no refrigerators, there was a lot of airborne dust coming in off the street which contained bits of whatever had been dropped on the streets from horse manure to the leakage from the night soil cart and the end result was that everyone was getting a large dose of bacteria every time they opened their mouths.
Now I’m not suggesting that people were proof against all these attacks on their system, we know that they weren’t, there was a constant low level of stomach infections and diarrhoea. What I suspect is that if we could go back to those days in a time machine we would almost certainly go down with infections straight away. This would be because we had no resistance to that environment but it may be that our modern obsession with washing and hygiene could make it worse.
Ken also told me about a worrying development which might, for all I know, have reached us over here. When a mother leaves hospital after childbirth she is given a parting present, a selection of ‘baby care products’, free gifts from the manufacturers to get the mothers hooked on their offerings. Some of these can be quite powerful germicides and soaps and Ken says he constantly tells the mothers that a healthy baby needs nothing more to keep it clean than warm water and a very mild, unscented soap. Unfortunately this is nowhere near as seductive as the manufacturer’s goodies. So, common sense and history might be telling us that it could be a good thing to be a little less obsessive about personal hygiene. As the old saying goes, ‘We all have to eat a peck of dirt before we die’. Perhaps a small amount regularly might improve our health.
On a related subject, my picture this week is of a well-hidden Barlick secret. If you look carefully, you will see buried in the fields between Lane Ends and Greenberfield our very own ‘waste water treatment facility’. The reason I have mentioned this is because I was talking to some young people the other day and they didn’t know what happened to the waste when they pulled the plug in the bath or flushed the lavatory. It had never dawned on them that there was no magic involved and that people had to work on these facilities to maintain them. They were absolutely horrified that anyone should have to spend their lives dealing with what they called ‘poo’! Just think what our lives would be like without it.
I’ve run out of space this week but I shall come back to dirty jobs, there may be more of them being done in this day and age than you imagined. All comments or questions welcomed.
23 August 2002
23 August 2002
Your mother did lots of good things for you but one of the most important, and essential to your survival, is that when you were born she gave your skin a population of microbes, fungi and antibiotics which have been at work all your life acting as a first defence against infections which are constantly attacking your skin. Under normal circumstances these wee beasties thrive and reproduce and keep up the level of protection you need all your life. That is, it used to, unfortunately there are signs that things are changing.
I was talking to Ken Sansome, one of my medical mates in America, and we got on to the subject of personal hygiene. He said that one of the changes he has noted in American society during his long career is that young people especially believe that they have to shower two or three times a day using very strong bactericidal soaps. One of the most popular of these is called ‘Spring Fresh’ and is very popular with the lads. Ken told me that he knows immediately if someone is using it because whatever the scent is, he is allergic to it and starts sneezing as soon as they enter his office.
There have been some interesting scientific studies on this subject. They suggest that we are getting too obsessive about hygiene and that the benign population on our skin can be damaged by too much washing, particularly when strong bactericidal soaps are used. Another study suggests that one of the best things we could do for young children is let them eat a spoonful of dirt every now and again. Exposure to bacteria is what encourages our bodies to manufacture antibodies which protect our systems. All this got me to thinking. I remembered the number of times during my working life when I have eaten my sandwiches without having had the chance to wash my hands, was I unwittingly building up my resistance?
Seventy years ago in Barlick there were no showers, bathrooms or hot running water and having a bath in most houses was a big production. The tin bath which hung on a nail in the back yard all week was brought into the kitchen, placed on the hearth rug in front of the fire and filled with hot water out of the side boiler if you had one. Failing this, you boiled plenty of water on the fire or the gas stove. Everyone in the house used the same water, children first, then mother and father, every now and again the water was warmed up with another kettle of boiling water. When all had finished, the water was bailed out of the bath with a lading tin until father could lift it and pour the remainder down the sink. If you were really poor, you borrowed your neighbour’s bath. All this palaver meant that it only happened once a week, almost always on Friday night. I’ve always thought that the sewage works, or Waste Water Treatment Facility as it is called today, must have been a very busy place on Fridays!
Add to this another circumstance, there were no refrigerators, there was a lot of airborne dust coming in off the street which contained bits of whatever had been dropped on the streets from horse manure to the leakage from the night soil cart and the end result was that everyone was getting a large dose of bacteria every time they opened their mouths.
Now I’m not suggesting that people were proof against all these attacks on their system, we know that they weren’t, there was a constant low level of stomach infections and diarrhoea. What I suspect is that if we could go back to those days in a time machine we would almost certainly go down with infections straight away. This would be because we had no resistance to that environment but it may be that our modern obsession with washing and hygiene could make it worse.
Ken also told me about a worrying development which might, for all I know, have reached us over here. When a mother leaves hospital after childbirth she is given a parting present, a selection of ‘baby care products’, free gifts from the manufacturers to get the mothers hooked on their offerings. Some of these can be quite powerful germicides and soaps and Ken says he constantly tells the mothers that a healthy baby needs nothing more to keep it clean than warm water and a very mild, unscented soap. Unfortunately this is nowhere near as seductive as the manufacturer’s goodies. So, common sense and history might be telling us that it could be a good thing to be a little less obsessive about personal hygiene. As the old saying goes, ‘We all have to eat a peck of dirt before we die’. Perhaps a small amount regularly might improve our health.
On a related subject, my picture this week is of a well-hidden Barlick secret. If you look carefully, you will see buried in the fields between Lane Ends and Greenberfield our very own ‘waste water treatment facility’. The reason I have mentioned this is because I was talking to some young people the other day and they didn’t know what happened to the waste when they pulled the plug in the bath or flushed the lavatory. It had never dawned on them that there was no magic involved and that people had to work on these facilities to maintain them. They were absolutely horrified that anyone should have to spend their lives dealing with what they called ‘poo’! Just think what our lives would be like without it.
I’ve run out of space this week but I shall come back to dirty jobs, there may be more of them being done in this day and age than you imagined. All comments or questions welcomed.
23 August 2002