By Staff Writer: Jerri Clewis
Throughout many homes, inconspicuous household goods lay in plain sight in laundry rooms, bathrooms, and even the kitchen. Laundry detergents, hand soap, and the unbeatable combination of shampoo and conditioner may seem simple at first glance, but there is far more to the history of these sudsy products than meets the eye.
Ancient Babylonians developed soap-making as early as 2800 BC, which Archaeologists found inscribed on clay cylinders with words translated as “fats boiled with ashes,” according to the American Cleaning Institute. The Ebers papyrus, a medical document from about 1500 BC, also describes an Egyptian method of combining animal and vegetable oils with alkaline salts to create soap, which they used for treating skin diseases and general washing.
Centuries later, the countries of Italy, Spain, and France began producing their own soaps, which sometimes included oil from olive trees. Soap in all its forms became a highly valued luxury product known for its usefulness, but one secret remained.
Doctor Ignaz Semmelweiss of Austria and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Boston, started unlocking the secret during the 1800s when they began theorizing that the dirty hands of doctors could cause fevers in patients. Semmelweiss recommended hand washing at the University of Vienna’s General Hospital’s clinics in 1847 to combat high maternal mortality rates attributed to puerperal fever, according to the World Health Organization. He had discovered that the doctors and medical students were going straight to the delivery suite after performing autopsies, leading him to believe they could have been spreading “cadaverous particles” to the deceased patients.
At the time, Semmelweiss’ colleagues didn’t appreciate his theory because it implied the doctors were responsible for their patients’ deaths. Despite his unpopularity, the creation of germ theory in later decades would change the medical world and reveal the importance of hygiene.
Soap has since become something entirely different. Chemists have synthesized new forms of soap, technically called detergents, which are the products we use today. Even still, soap carries out its original purpose of helping us stay clean and keeping invisible germs at bay—all thanks to fats being boiled with ashes thousands of years ago.