Duan Gongzi then danced with his eyebrows and talked endlessly;

"I once read in a book, and it is true, that European civilization in the early Middle Ages was also constantly regressing. As the glory of the Roman Empire faded, the advanced engineering techniques of various boiler pipes were lost, and the large public baths of ancient times gradually collapsed and fell into disuse. Medieval Europeans slowly became unable to bathe as well as the ancient Romans. Europeans did not like to bathe, especially the Christians of the Middle Ages, St. Joseph mentioned in a sermon that he was baptized by Christ Himself and therefore did not need to be bathed again, which was the golden rule of the early Christians, and they never bathed. Benedict was a strange monk, who spent most of his life in rags and barely ate. Sometimes he was clumsy with words, sometimes he was yelling. Benedict believed that bathing was a meaningless act and that it breeds original sin. In the eighth century, he was made a saint for preaching this idea. It was only in the 18th century that the Christians got rid of their notorious reputation for not bathing. The famous European kings in history who did not like to bathe, Queen Elizabeth and Louis XIV were all people who did not take a bath all their lives. And after the collapse of the Roman Empire, Europe has been living a life of basically not bathing. In medieval Europe, ordinary people basically did not take a bath for life, and it was claimed that it was a Europe that did not wash for thousands of years. Only in the monastery are cold baths used for penance as punishment, and baths are used for healing. Until the beginning of the 19th century, bathers were considered sick people. For example, in the fourth century, a Christian woman who made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem boasted that she had not washed her face for 18 years and therefore felt that she was the purest. In medieval Europe, according to the Catholic Church, the filthy body was seen as closer to God, and not bathing became a symbol of holiness! Those who had enough courage to go unbathed for many years could even be canonized as saints! So many devout clergy and Christians began to practice filthy and arduous - His Excellency St. Abraham insisted on not washing his face or feet for 50 years, and finally succeeded in canonization. Monsieur Saint-Simon allowed the worm to arch over his festering wounds, and never washed it until he died. Madame Saint Euffracia presided over a convent that taught more than 130 of the most devout nuns, strictly supervising them for the rest of their lives. The mother of King Henry IV of France insisted on not bathing for the rest of her life and was canonized as the Holy Lady Agnès. Until the 60s of the 19th century, the city of London was full of stinking. Because of cholera alone, London killed more than 14,000 people in 1849, more than 10,000 in 1854, and more than 5,000 in 1866. The city's drainage system is filled with the carcasses of cats, dogs, rats, and the entrails and feces of all kinds of animals. The well-mannered modern Western gentlemen and ladies we see in the movie are actually full of dirt on their bodies and lice in their hair, all relying on perfume to solve their problems. If they take off their clothes, Ah Q and Wu Ma will definitely be cleaner than them. In fact, they can't be blamed for being rude, because the sanitary conditions and hygienic habits at that time were like that. And we in China have long popularized toilets and squatting toilets according to local conditions and customs. As for the way of the aristocracy to go to the toilet, bathing and changing clothes has long become a beautiful daily vocabulary in my Chinese history, even in some areas where bathing is inconvenient, some important ceremonies are held to bathe and change clothes and incense to show respect. The ancient Chinese bathed much more often than in Europe. Westerners have lived in the dung pit for thousands of years, suffered from filth, and died of more than half of the population, but they realized the importance of public health, and with the help of the gold and silver robbed by the industrial revolution and invasion and expansion, they began to popularize the modern health system, so until the late Qing Dynasty, after Chinese students studying in the United States arrived in the United States, they had to take a bath every day, and Americans were still very strange - why do you Chinese have to bathe every day?" At that time, it was also the era when Europe and the United States began to change the traditional concept of hygiene.

In 1899, Postel invented the drop-down toilet. The manufacture of a large number of washstands has made people in Europe and the United States accustomed to washing their faces every day - this change of customs has been called for for hundreds of years by people of insight.

After 1916, due to the breakthrough of the ceramic industry, modern style bathtubs began to be mass-produced, and Europeans and Americans had spare money, idle work, and idle desires, and finally felt the joy of bathing, so they came to the top and became clean people.

As one of the most recognizable emperors in French history, he devoted himself to providing his subjects with food and clothing.

He was an avid hunter and changed into a new shirt every morning, but after the hunt the emperor neither bathed nor sprinkled perfume to cover his body odor.

When his second wife first saw him, she fainted with the stench of his body, so much so that on their wedding night she had to sprinkle perfume on herself before she could have sex with Henry IV.

After the Middle Ages, due to the prevalence of Christianity in Europe, they all considered bathing to be unholy.

Even the Catholics who practice in monasteries only have the opportunity to bathe a few times in their lifetime. Civilians hardly bathe.

But the princes and nobles had large bathrooms that had been handed down from Roman times. During the Roman Empire, many of the large baths in Rome were ornate palaces, but many of them were charitable facilities for the public.

It is either completely free or a symbolic fee, no matter how poor ordinary people are, there is a place to wash.

But in the Middle Ages, due to the degradation of technology, the ability to build large and complex boilers and pipes was lost, and the cost of bathing in Europeans increased dramatically.

Therefore, in the early Middle Ages, even kings and nobles, most of them only took a bath once every three months, mainly for these reasons: one is to pad a very delicate cloth or silk under the bath, and the other is the problem of bath water, at that time there was no huge bath in ancient Rome, and boiling a pot of water in a large pot at home was only enough to fill one-third of the bath, so it was very troublesome to boil water three times to take a hot bath.

The third is that the soap, sesame oil and spices used by the ancient Romans for bathing were very expensive in medieval Europe, and no one could afford them except for the big nobles above the earl.

Fourth, the adverse effects of feudal superstition, the Catholic Church believes that bathing will damage the vitality of the body, and it is best to take less baths as a last resort.

Therefore, most of the Europeans in the early Middle Ages did not take a bath very much, ordinary people could not afford expensive bathing equipment, and many people did not take a good bath once in their lives.

The farmer may often swim in the pond, but he never washes himself properly. However, there were still people who bathed, but in the next century, this good habit of bathing came to an abrupt end in Europe.

The main cause was the Black Death. In particular, if we are unlucky enough to travel to Europe after the Black Death, it will be too miserable to see, and it is very different from what we imagine in Europe, starting in the early 14th century, a Black Death spread throughout Europe, claiming the lives of one-third of Europeans, and the Decameron was written during this period.

In the aftermath of the catastrophe, Europeans looked for the cause everywhere, and bathing was unfortunately among them.

At that time, doctors believed that water would weaken the function of the organs, and that when the pores were fully opened in a hot bath, toxic air would enter the body.

Therefore, the more you take a bath, the more likely you are to get sick, only if you don't take a bath can you be healthy, if there is a thick layer of dirt on your body, you can resist the invasion of disease!

So, under the fear of the Black Death and the propaganda of the church, Europeans finally entered a stinking era in which the whole people did not bathe—the once thriving public baths were all shut down quickly, and people never got wet unless they had to.

Bathing is used as a form of torture and medical treatment, and the treatment is for the mentally ill, similar to the modern Professor Yang's use of electroshock therapy to treat Internet addiction.

According to the doctor's orders, the aristocrats wiped their faces every morning with a dry white cloth for cleanliness, but never washed with water – European quacks advised people to clean their faces and eyes only with a dry white cloth.

Because washing with water is harmful to eyesight, it can cause dental problems and colds, make the face pale, and be more sensitive to the heat and cold of the weather...... Even in the 17th century, during the reign of King Louis XIV of France, the most clean French noblewoman bathed only twice a year without the advice of a doctor, and usually wiped herself with a dry towel.

King Louis XIV himself had to bathe carefully under the guidance of a physician, bathing only once in 64 years, from 1647 to 1711 – an astonishing record that is still preserved in the daily physical records of Louis XIV's imperial physician.

By the 18th century, King Louis XV of France bathed only three times in his life, one on his birthday, the second on his wedding, and three on his burial.

As a result, the French had to devote themselves to the study of perfume, which was first invented in ancient India and Persia, and in Europe, the Italians, who inherited the legacy of ancient Rome, established the first perfume production workshops.

But the perfume craft in France has always been very backward, and it was only later that it suddenly flourished, because everyone stopped bathing!

The French aristocracy first imported a large number of perfumes from Italy, and then felt that it was not cost-effective, so they thought about opening their own perfume workshops.

In the era of Louis XVI, he used the power of the whole country to dig up the masters of the Italian perfume industry and laid the foundation of the French perfume industry in one fell swoop.

During the Napoleonic Empire, the emperor Napoleon, who loved science, encouraged French scientists to devote themselves to the study of organic chemistry, so that the French perfume industry began to lead the world trend, until today, so the perfume industry in Europe is so developed, rooted in this, but Rome is okay, from the 16th and 17th centuries, it began to slowly resume the habit of bathing, especially in Protestant countries, which usually recovered the earliest.

To sum up, the Europeans in the early Middle Ages did not take a bath, mainly because of economic poverty and lack of hygiene, and for the aristocracy who did not have a problem economically, it was purely a personal preference - some people liked bathing very much, and some people hated bathing.

In the most dangerous of times, if you are caught secretly bathing behind someone's back, beware of having the priests who are worried about the lack of scapegoats carry a huge black cauldron, frame them as witches or wizards who spread the plague, and then be tied to the pyre by the angry people and burned with fire!

It's really for the sake of bathing, maybe it will cost you your life.

Xiao Fei then said: "In fact, we Chinese also have times when we don't like to take a bath, that is, during the Wei and Jin dynasties, Lu Xun said in the article "Wei Jin Manners and the Relationship between Articles and Medicine and Wine" that eating the elixir of immortality is very troublesome.

After eating, the body first has chills, then fever, as if you have malaria. When a person eats it, his face will be red, and his internal organs will feel burning, and he must drink a lot of alcohol to remove the poison from his body.

Wang Xudong said that the name of this elixir of immortality is actually that

"Wushi San, also known as Cold Food San, according to the history books, is

"Cold clothes, cold drinks, cold food, cold sleeping, extremely cold is good. But this excepts alcohol. After taking Wushi San, you must drink good wine, mellow wine, and hot wine, so as to dissipate the heat in the body. Goshisan is not only extremely demanding on diet, but also very strange in terms of clothing. If you wear tights, you will rub against the skin, like a knife to cut around the body, in addition to the wide, the old and new clothes are also very important, new clothes are hard, generally not welcome. Due to the sensitive skin, the clothes cannot be washed, and the new clothes and washed clothes are relatively hard, which is extremely uncomfortable to wear. In order to reduce the area of their feet being rubbed, they chose to wear clogs instead of shoes, so the people of the Wei and Jin dynasties all looked like they were all in wide robes and big sleeves, and they were elegant and elegant on the surface, but in fact, they were so bitter in their hearts. Because there is hardly bathing and changing clothes, and when the clothes and body are dirty, it becomes a paradise for lice.

"Talking about lice" became part of the demeanor of celebrities and scholars in the Jin Dynasty.

"Most of the people in the Jin Dynasty were very bad-tempered, arrogant, crazy, and sexually violent, probably because of taking medicine. For example, if a fly disturbs him, he draws his sword and pursues him, and even when he speaks, he must be confused, and sometimes he is close to madness. Under the poison of the elixir, the temper of the Wei and Jin people became very bad, and sometimes they were even violent. Ji Kang, the leader of the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Forest, often took Wushi San, but once a fly came to annoy him, and he was so angry that he drew his sword to chase after him. In terms of the way they spoke, Wei and Jin celebrities were also proud of talking nonsense and crazy words. It's not really how much they want to behave

"Character", but because under the poison of drugs and alcohol, they simply cannot control their emotions, nor can they control their tongues.

However, this is a very short period of time, soon drifting like light dust, in general, our Chinese is the most hygienic, the most clean nation, our sanitary conditions and sanitary equipment have been ahead of the world's advanced level, so don't think that the moon in the West is rounder than China, our Chinese nation has been leading the world's advanced level before, I am proud that I am Chinese.

“