Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - How Filthy was the Renaissance?

Episode Date: January 23, 2026

The Renaissance, a period of transformation in art, learning, philosophy and science that brought us Leonardo Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael and Donatello (the artists, not the turtles). This era of the Early Modern period seems to have been tinted with reds and golds, it all sounds very classy ... but how filthy was it?Kate is joined once again by Dr Julia Martins to explore how Early Modern people washed, how they got rid of their waste, and how dangerous some of their methods were.Julia can be found at juliamartins.co.ukThis episode was edited by Tim Arstall. The producer was Sophie Gee. The senior producer was Freddy Chick.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  All music from Epidemic Sounds.Betwixt the Sheets: History of Sex, Scandal & Society is a History Hit podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, my lovely betwixters. It's me, Kate Lister. Welcome back to betwixt the sheets, the podcast that gets very dirty and filthy with history. And because of that, I have to give you the fair do's warning at the top of each episode, and here it is.

This is an adult podcast spoken by adults to other adults about adulty things in an adulty way covering a range of adult subjects and used to being an adult too. I don't know why I keep having to say that. I mean, surely you know that a podcast titled sex scandal in society is going to get a bit saucy. Oh well, let's crack on. Imagine Leonardo da Vinci drawing the Vitruvian man,

or Michelangelo up a scaffold, painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, or Galileo investigating the night sky through a telescope, or Queen Elizabeth the first rallying her nation in the face of the Spanish Armada. Oh, they're all so powerful, so talented, so intelligent. But how did they smell? That's the real question, isn't it?

That's what we really want to know. If you got up close and you were giving them a good sniffing, what would they smell like? Just how clean were people in the early modern period. Do you want to find out? I know I do. Right, on with the show. Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets,

The History of Sex Scandal and Society with me, Kate Lister. The Renaissance was a time of progress in the arts, progress in the sciences, progresses in philosophy, progress is everywhere. But what about in the bathroom? Where and how often did these people bathe? What were they using? Where did they go to the toilet?

What was the sewage system like? and so many other questions. Today I'm joined once again by Dr. Julia Martins of Living History on YouTube, and we are going to find out just how filthy people in the Renaissance were. Are you ready? Well, I know I am. Let's crack on. Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Julia Martins.

How are you doing? I'm well, thank you, Kate. How are you? I'm so glad to be back here. We had so much fun last time, didn't we? That was a good giggle. I'm so glad that you. back for this one. This is

the next installment in our little mini series about how mucky were people from the past, basically. I love that. Excellent series. It's a good scene because that's one of the big misconception, or maybe it's not a misconception, but it's certainly something that everybody thinks about the past is that they were all

filthy and muddy and it was a horrible time to be around and everybody stank. And you are here to talk to us about the early modern period and about how stinky they were. Do you think that this is a period in history that is associated with being unhygienic and dirty? I mean, the medieval period definitely is. But how do you think your tudors, your Renaissance, your early moderns are doing?

I think the way that they're represented in like film and media is not as bad as medieval period, I would say. But it's still, I think, not fair to what people were actually doing. I think people worried a lot about not being filthy, not, you know, smelling bad. And I think we forget that sometimes. So I think it's, so I'm glad to be, you know, here and have the chance to talk about this. Yeah. Right. So let's try and to find what kind of time period are we talking about here, sort of the, sometimes we can flate early modern and Renaissance.

I think Renaissance sounds a bit nicer than early modern, but give us a rough time period. Roughly, I think we're talking from the period between the early 15th century to the mid-17th century when we're talking about the Renaissance. And I think this is not just like a time of rebirth of the rediscovery of classical texts and art, but I think it's also a time when the human body, the way people understood the human body was gradually shifting. I think the body was kind of being remapped in a way, right? So, yeah, so I think some things remain the same as they were in the medieval period.

And I think the best example of that is the very long-held belief in the humoral theory. So the idea that there were four humors, four fluids in the body, and that their balance determined health. And so that when they were not balanced, you weren't healthy, right? And at the same time, there are things that are changing, going from a kind of more so focused body, I guess we could say, in the medieval period, to a more mechanical body, increasingly mechanical body in the Renaissance. So gradually starting to think of the body as a kind of machine, right? And one of the main reasons for that shift was the rise of dissection. as a way to learn about the body. And I think that's the big change we're seeing in this period.

So before then, doctors had mostly relied on ancient authorities, right? People like Galen, who had dissected animals like pigs and monkeys, but not humans. But dissection was gradually starting to take over, starting from the 14, 15th century onwards. So it was starting in unexpected places, I think, to some people, places like convents, where nuns would perform it or no more. Yeah, yeah, nuns were very big into it. And this is a subject in itself that is so cool. Where was that in sister act?

Right. Yeah, no, they should include that. No, but seriously, because with some nuns being visionaries or being connected to miracles, there was this curiosity about what was going on inside their bodies after the death. And so, Kiara from Montefalco, she was the most famous example of that. And after she died, the nuns opened her body and inside her heart, they found, reportedly, they found three stones which were connected to the Holy Trinity. So that was a sign of her sainthood.

I mean, that's, I wasn't there, right? We weren't there. That's a lie, isn't it, ladies. Well, they... That's what they said happened. Exactly, yeah. But, yeah, so in places like that, dissection was increasingly performed, connected to, like, involving noble households as well, like autopsies. and things like that. So I think when we talk about the history of dissection, we often tend to think

of universities, which were very important, but they were not the only places where dissection was happening and understanding the body, right? But the big change, I think, came with Andreas Vesalius, because he wrote a book that kind of shifted everything. And he was famous for saying things like don't trust the book, trust the body, right? So this idea that you had to learn from practice through your senses and what you saw on the table in front of you rather than what the ancient had written about. And this led to a kind of new culture of dissection. And anatomy became kind of the cutting edge of science. Sorry, that was bad. So this was the big change that was going on, I think, in early modern Europe, and especially in places like Italy, right? So it's an exciting time for the history of

science and especially the history of medicine. There's a lot going on. There are continuities, but there are lots of new and exciting things going on as well. So, yeah. It's amazing how long it took to shake off this idea of like the ancient medicine is best. Like there's a bunch of ancient Greek guys who kind of did the best with what they had, but it was mostly mad. Yeah. And that was just like the greatest hits of medicine and they rolled it out again and again and again.

The idea of like having someone operate you whose most up-to-date book is 400 years old, a thousand years old. It's a very scary thought, I think. And as you said, it lasted so long. I mean, people were still thinking in terms of humors and things like that in the Victorian period, you know, when people were being treated for things, all kinds of things with blood lighting and all kinds of remedies to do with rebalancing the humors. So it lasted such a long time. But yeah, I think it's a different paradigm. It's a different way of understanding knowledge.

We tend to think knowledge. And I think we tend to think of knowledge, especially medical knowledge, in terms of like how recent it is. and we are always learning new things and more research is being done. So there's this idea that new is best. And whereas for them it was the opposite, right? It's the ancients. They held the knowledge, Galen, Hippocrates, you know, Aristotle. And that was kind of degraded through the century.

So the idea of like going back to the original source, that was like the true knowledge, right? So, yeah, not great. Not great. Like germ theory is a way off yet before anyone's going to come up with that. But how was their medical understanding around like dirt and filth are generally not healthy things to be around? I think that's such a cool question because it's an interesting subject because the way they thought about hygiene was so different compared to how we see it. I mean, so in terms of like defining keywords, I think we have to go back to like the word hygiene itself. And the word comes from Hygiea, right, the ancient Greek goddess.

And she was the daughter of Asclepius, who was the god of medicine in Greek mythology. So she's very closely connected to medicine, to health, to cleanliness. And that means both in an individual level and also a collective way, right? So things like public sanitation. She was usually depicted with a bowl of water. And the idea was that it was all about preventing sickness, right? So this gives us a clue, I think, about hygiene and how it was understood later. It wasn't just about being clean, but rather, I think about a culture of preventing illness and keeping good health through cleanliness.

So as you mentioned, how would that work in a world before people knew about germs? So I mentioned the four humors earlier, right? Black bile, yellow bile, phlegm and blood and how they had to be balanced for someone to be healthy. But there were other things that determined health. And they were usually called the six non-natural things. So outside things, outside of the humors. So these were exercise, sleep, nourishment, air, emotions, or I guess psychological state, and evacuation. And they could be manipulated these six non-natural things to treat illness, right?

So a physician might suggest a change in a patient's diet or exercise. That sounds quite reasonable, actually, all those things that you've just said there. Don't you think? We still talk about all of those today. Definitely, because it's about lifestyle, right? And you could tweak them to sort of get someone to regain health, but you could also be mindful of them to prevent illness coming and happening in the first place, right? So there were lots of books called Regiments of Health.

They were very popular in the medieval and early modern periods. And they were all about this topic of like, how do you preserve health? How do you maintain health? And hygiene was connected to these six non-natural things. especially evacuation. And here, again, we kind of need to redefine words because evacuation was much broader than it is now, right? Excrements themselves were a broader concept. It included things like sweat and tears and earwax, for instance. Anything coming out of the body. Exactly, including hair. Even hair could be considered a kind of excrement of the head, right?

So going back to cleanliness, Renaissance people would clean the body. from external things that made it dirty, just like us, right? Such as, I don't know, muddy hands from working on the soil. But they would also worry about what came from inside the body, these excrements. And they were so crucial to the role of evacuation. And evacuation was itself crucial to managing the non-naturals and health in general, right? So we can see that the way hygiene was understood was quite different from how we see it today. And if we take the skin as an example, it was all about the pot.

Right. So there was this Italian physician, Girolamo Mercuriale, and he wrote that the skin was like a sieve. If the pores became blocked by dirt or oils, the vapors created inside the body through digestion. They couldn't escape the body. And if they were trapped inside you, they might affect your brain or your heart and that could be dangerous, right? So this was a widespread belief. Going back to Veselius, he also described the skin as having layers and pores. And he even wrote that if the skin was too dirty, if the pores were clogged, that made someone harder to dissect. So physicians, surgeons, people were really talking about pores and how the people were porous, right? And how the body was constantly leaking impurities. And that's why you have to keep your skin clean, right?

Okay. Yeah, I see. I'm joining up the dots here. I mean, it's a bit bonkers, but I can see why they're saying what they're saying here. Right. But I mean, how do you do that, right? How do you clean the body, I think, is the question. That's the big one in it.

How do you keep clean in the early modern world? Exactly. Because you have to be mindful of lots of different things. If you used warm water, that would open the pores. And that could be dangerous because it would make the body vulnerable to air, right? Potentially miasma, bad air, corrupted air. So in the same way that pores would let out what was inside the body. the body. They were also a gateway for outside things to penetrate the body. So while people

did bathe and they did wash their bodies with water, they were mindful of keeping their pores open for too long and how that could be an issue, right? Don't stay in the hot water for too long. Did they have public bathing? Like they did in the medieval period sort of right up until, I think it's probably syphilis that came along and clobbered it in this idea of sharing spaces. but what's public bathing looking like in this time period? I think that's a good question because we know in the Roman world that public bathing was everywhere, was connected to the social life, the baths were hubs of people. And that continued, we know in the medieval period.

And I know that Eleanor Yeneg is always talking about how people did bathe. She is. So that continued. But then the plague hit, right, in the 14th century. And a century later, a century later, the syphilis epidemic. And the main problem with these epidemics and public bathing was that people believed, physicians believe that these small spaces, warm spaces with warm water, that they made it easier for disease to spread, right? People were close to each other. It might not, it might not been right for the reasons they thought it was.

Yeah, but I mean, we know in the case of syphilis, we know that public bathing was connected to all sorts of different activities. like sex work and all of that. So, you know, it wouldn't have helped, I would guess, right? So they started sort of becoming less central. At the same time, interestingly enough, in the Renaissance, sort of balneology or medicinal bathing, medical baths, were exploding in popularity, right? So people were bathing.

But I think there's a shift, an important shift happening that goes from kind of, how do I say this, it's kind of about the friction. So it's a kind of mechanical cleaning. It's this idea of rubbing the body, scrubbing the body. Oh, like exfoliating. Kind of exfoliating, yeah. So there's this idea that you use water from a basin, you know, a jug of water.

And you have linen cloths or you have combs for your hair. And you just really rub the skin to get the grime, to get everything to remove the dirt, right? So this is very, very important. I'll be back with Julia after this short break. break, common was bathing. So like the idea of like you go and hang out with your mates in the bath is it's been kind of clamped down on by this point, but there's medicinal bathing. There's this persistent rumor about Elizabeth I don't remember the exact numbers, but like she had a bath once a year, whether she wanted it or not, or like even then she was considered exceptionally clean.

But then I also read she actually had a bathroom with a bath in it. So I don't think that that's true. But like what's your take on that? How common was bathing? I think my take is that physician were really, really worried about that. And there were so many different polemics because of the whole situation with making the body fragile through bathing, making it vulnerable. So if you had a cold, if you were pregnant, if you were on your period,

immersion in water might not be the best. But that doesn't mean that you wouldn't necessarily use a basin of water to, with water, clean your body. Probably starting from the top down, right? So you would do your face. Yeah. Yeah. You go like hands and face first and then you might work your way down.

Your feet would be the last thing for sure. But it was something considered important. And we know in the Renaissance, there was a very popular book called The Courtier. And it was about how to be a courtier, how to behave in court. And it was said that it was beastly. It was something that only animals would do to have your hands and your face dirty. So it was very important for people to be clean. And this was something that they would do early in the morning, right?

And the same goes for changing your clothes. And this is something I wanted to go back to because I think it's so important to how they saw hygiene and keeping the body clean. And it is different to how we see it today, right? We don't think as much about the clothes as they did, I think, right? Because linen in particular was incredibly important as a kind of way of keeping the body clean and healthy from what came from the inside, right? I mean, white linen underclothes were everywhere in Renaissance Italy,

and they were a kind of dry cleaning system for the body, if we could say that, right? Interesting. Okay. What'd you mean by that? There was this Italian writer, Alessandro Petronio, and he wrote a book about how people in Rome lived and how they kept healthy. And he wrote that linen underclothes would draw out the sweat and the impurities from the skin, and they would essentially clean the body by doing so, right? And we know thanks to prime resources like household inventories that even people who weren't particularly wealthy

owned multiple shirts, sort of shameses, linen shemises, and they would change them daily. Even if the body itself wasn't immersed in water, they would do that, right? So is the shirt getting dirty, not the outer clothes? Exactly. Because of course we know that if you were someone wealthy and your outer clothes were made of fine silk or precious fabrics. They are very difficult to clean and very expensive, right?

They would be, wouldn't they? Can't put that in on a boil wash, can you? Definitely not, especially as they used urine, right, to wash. Oh, right. So you wouldn't want your silks in the tub. But, yeah, and we know that for super wealthy people, you know, like the Medici family, they would own dozens over 50, 100 shirts, linen shirts, and they would change them throughout the day to keep themselves fresh.

Right. And of course we know besides that, perfumed waters, this kind of thing, they were everywhere for hair and for body. And here I just wanted to give you an example because this is a recipe that came across. I'm a big fan of Katerina Sforza. She was a famous noble woman. She was an alchemist. She was known as the Tigris of Furli. Oh, yes. So you must have heard the story. There was a siege around her city and her enemies had her children hostages. And she was like she lifted her skirts and she flashed. everyone and she was like, keep them, I can make more, like I have the means, you know. Yeah, so she's quite, she's quite an interesting character. Yeah, maybe not. But definitely alchemist of the year, I think, because she collected recipes for all kinds of things to do with perfumes and cosmetics and medicine. And she had a recipe called celestial water. And that was for cleaning and clearing the face and the body. So it was rosemary flowers and white wine, basically. And you would distilled. that and that would remove all of your spots and would make your skin shine like silver. So

I like examples like this because they show there's a lot of overlap between hygiene and cosmetics, right? You're removing spots, but you're also cleaning the skin in the process. You're cleaning away all the oil from the pores and then you're keeping them open enough for the vapors to escape the body, right? So yeah, and you would smell nice, right? And I think this is something that people, another myth, I think, because I think lots of people know how important perfumes were throughout history. But there's this idea that you would use perfume to kind of mask the bad smell. And I think that's missing the point. Because the way I came to see perfumes reading about these kind of recipes is a kind of PPE of sorts, right? PPE, right?

Yes. Okay. It's a silly analogy word. No, no, I thought. Go on, explain why perfume is like PPE. I think the best way to think about it is that, okay, so if we go back to the pores, we know that bad air and disease could enter the body through the pores, but they could also enter the body through orifices, right? So the nose, the ears and smells could be used against foul air. And in a way, they would kind of shield the body from this bad air, protecting your body, right? So in Renaissance Italian books there are lots of recipes for Pormandas, for instance, are scented gloves, oils, creams and fragrances. And they would make you smell nice, for sure.

But they were also act as a kind of shield when you went to areas that weren't particularly clean. Stop the bad smells getting him. Exactly. And it's the same with the plague, right? We know with the iconic image of the plague doctor with the beaked mask inside the beak, there would be herbs and scented things of all sorts, and they would kind of act as a filter for the bad air protecting the doctor in question, right? And yeah, so I think if we see perfume as kind of a pee of sorts, I think it makes more sense. We know, as you said, everything,

this is all bonkers, obviously, but we know that they didn't know about germs, so how would they? How would they know that this made no sense? But I think that if you kind of accept the premise, if you understand the logic behind it, it sort of does make sense. It does make sense. I can totally see what it is that they think that they're doing there. So it would have smelt quite heavily perfumed, I reckon, if you were knocking around at this point. Obviously, in your built-up industrial areas, there would have been some pretty nasty niffs. And you can see that through some of the records.

Like in York, for example, there's lots of complaints about the areas with the butchers and the tanners because it's just lots of animal entrails. And it would have stunk. So there have been areas that were just horrendous. But what about, this is the question that I've asked in everyone of this series so far, human waste. How are we dealing with this at this particular point? Because wherever you've got a civilization, wherever you have a group of people, that you're going to have to factor this in somewhere.

Yes. I think that's such an important question. And you're right. Did they really throw it out of a window and go Gardaloo? Is that true? I mean, I mean, I. I guess kind of some people did, but it's not a widespread practice, right? No, of course it's not.

The same way, like you said, there is the myth that people were filthy like in themselves, but also the myth that cities were dirty. And of course, there were dirtier areas in every city. But I don't think it's that simple. I think a good story to kind of illustrate that is from the de Cameron by Boccaccio. I love this story, honestly. It's slightly grotesque, but I love it. And it's about kind of late medieval sanitation.

or it's shortcomings, to be precise. This is the story of a guy, Andre Ucho, and he goes to Naples to buy horses, as one does. And he's lured into a house by a woman who claims to be his sister, and he's like, sure, I'll go inside the house. Okay, and then once inside the house, he feels a sudden urge to empty his belly in his words. Okay, as it happens, it's supposed to be a funny story,

so it's all, like, slightly ridiculous, but okay. So he's inside the house he needs to empty his belly. and then he steps into a kind of narrow alleyway between two houses. And there's a plank of wood that serves as a latrine. And of course, as he's using it, the plank breaks and he falls into the cesspit below. Okay. So that's the story. I mean, 14th century Italians loved.

Stories slightly gross, I think. I mean, we could say that Chaucer did as well, so it's not just Boccaccio, right? I think so. But this is kind of a story that illustrates the shortcomings, I think, of public sanitation. But I don't think that's fair. I think it's supposed to be exaggerated. It's supposed to be grotesque. And this idea that people would just throw their waists out of the window,

it's an exaggeration as well, right? Because in places like in Italian cities, there were officers that there were people who would find you if you did that, right? There were in places like Florence, especially, they were really good in terms of public sanitation. There were people who worked as perjures who cleaned the streets and made sure that the narrow alleyways between houses weren't blocked by rubbish.

There's a historian, I really enjoy her work, Sandra Cavallo, and she writes a lot about this idea that cleanliness was a civic duty. You wouldn't just throw your waist away, right? And as you mentioned in York with the bad smells, in Italy's case, people were worried about what we would call air pollution as well, right? Bad airs, because again, they are connected to disease. So if you were doing smelly things like tanning hides in a residential area, you would would cause bad air and you could be fined. So again, this all goes back to this problem. It's not just

about the fact that when you're tanning hides, it smells bad and so it's unpleasant. It's dangerous if it's connected to disease spreading, right? And there's something that I don't know if you've ever seen these, but so Leonardo da Vinci, he designed a kind of ideal city and he imagined that it would be great if there were different levels for pedestrians and for waste removal. So Oh, he was very clever, wasn't he? He was. And he was thinking, what I find so interesting about people like him is that he was thinking about the most mundane things as well as the most sort of transcendent, glorious things

as well. I think that's why he's such an interesting person still for so many of us, because he was interested in everything. He was curious about everything. And so he was thinking, you know, how can we make cities better for people? So, yeah. And of course, as you mentioned with syphilis and with plague, People, officials, health boards, all kinds of people were worried about cities being as clean as possible so that disease would be contained, right?

So in Milan, the health board was talking about street cleaning, emptying latrines regularly, all these kinds of things to make sure that the plague didn't spread or didn't spread as quickly or as much, right? I'll be back with Julia after this short break. All right, so they're good on plague and syphilis and keep things clean. as clean as you can do, and you might not be washing your clothes all the time, but you're undergarmine. You're underclothes. You're underclothes. They're being washed and I can see the thinking there. Just as a woman, can I ask you, like, what about menstruation? Like, because you don't really get a saying that. That's come in. And it's, no matter how many undershirts you change, you're still dealing with that one. Do we have, like, evidence at all about,

like, how would that be dealt with? varies quite a lot, but we do have sources. Again, the problem I think with this trying to study this kind of thing is that because there were so many taboos about it, that sometimes you just can't find all the details you want to find. But I think we have sources of people writing about women using regs, tying regs around them, or using more chemises or shifts over each other and then changing those. But again, I think because we're talking about so many layers of clothing, it's very different when you compare to, I don't know, like being a teenager in the 21st century and kind of bleeding through your trousers at school, it's very different because you have layers

upon layers, you know. And again, menstruation was considered to be so important for women's health. You had to bleed regularly and quite a lot. It was expected that women would have, you know, frequent periods and that there would be quite a lot of them. And there's even a quote that I find slightly disturbing, but it's a hypocrite text that says that women should bleed as a sacrificial victim in terms of like the amount of blood that was expected. Of course, that's just, yeah, awful. But anyway, so people were thinking about that and they were dealing with that. They were using rags. They were cleaning them. And I think about the UK specifically, a good source for that. There's an article by Sarah Reel.

who's another historian that I really like, and she wrote about the importance of these cloths or rags that women would use and how there was even a case of it being used as a kind of offense, right? Like you are as dirty as period rag or something like that. So, yeah, so people were thinking about that and they were they were minding that. And at the same time, we know with sex manuals, which were, again, kind of everywhere as well, that there was advice about avoiding sexual activity with a woman who was on her period because, you know, and I'm sure you came across that multiple times because if you did have children. Oh, it's everywhere that one, isn't it? Yeah. The idea that the menstruating body is dirty. But what about something then like

body hair? Because that's interesting how that becomes associated with hygiene at different points throughout history. Yeah. So thinking about body hair and about beards, I found it so interesting when I found out that because there's this idea that the hair is kind of an excrement and you have to be careful with contamination, you have to clean your hair. That meant that men were sometimes advised to have two different combs, one for their hair and one for their beard so that you wouldn't have the issue of contamination. And that surprised me. But again, if you look at Renaissance combs, most of them have two sides, and one of them is

for untangling and the other is for checking for lice. So that's this idea of like very thorough combing. But then in terms of hair removal, that's also very popular as well. And we know that there was in the late medieval period and Renaissance as well, this idea of high foreheads being connected to YouTube. They love that, don't they? Yeah. Which, yeah, and we see even in England, I think Elizabeth Woodville, I think is a good example of that, the medieval queen. Because if you look at her portrait, she has such a high forehead.

And, you know, so women would be plucking those hairs, which must have heard. terribly, but they also use cosmetics to get rid of bodily hair, right? And yeah, so going back to Katerina's Forza, the alchemist that I mentioned earlier, she collected recipes for this as well, right, as did many other women of her day. So she had formulas using quicklime and opiment, which is a kind of arsenic, so very dangerous because it could potentially burn the skin. One thing that I find interesting about this kind of formula in the Renaissance, because you find them everywhere. Yeah, you know, formulas using ingredients that we know to be dangerous or toxic or, you know, is that you have to be mindful of how long you you leave the product on your skin essentially,

right? So women would use prayers as kind of kitchen timers of sorts. So the advice would be like apply this for the length of paternoster or something like that and not longer. And that is kind of a timer of sorts, right? But women were also advised to keep an eye on the mirror if you had one, because if the skin started turning red or itching, then you should remove it at once. So, yeah, so it's tricky because you want to burn, quote, unquote, enough to get rid of the hair, but not too much. So, yeah, I'm sure people had all kinds of accidents. And this is something I was going to say, because there's such a good book about this, Jill Berg's book, How to Be a Renaissance woman. She, I mean, she's brilliant, because the book,

is very interesting, but one thing that she does that I find fascinating as a historian is that she tests so many of these recipes. She recreates the conditioners and the dry shampoos and all of that. And yeah, and I find that really cool. So that's, you know, if people are interested in learning more about that, that's where I would go. But in any case, so facial hair and bodily hair, people were worried about that. And there were formulas coming from places like Muslim Spain. Muslim women were really well known for those formulas. And these recipes were traveling everywhere during the Renaissance. And I think that's so cool because we forget sometimes how interconnected all those places were, you know, how women were writing these formulas in

their journals. They were sending letters. They were being published in, you know, printed books with the printing press, everything changed. And so this kind of recipe, they were everywhere, right? And I have one here that I want to show you. This is a book that I have. This is a book of medical recipes by the lady Isabella Cortez. And she is a mysterious author, 16th century author. And it's basically a book of recipes for all things to do with alchemy, cosmetics, hygiene. And you can see really well the overlap between cosmetics and hygiene because there are so many formulas like this one, soap to make the hands soft and beautiful. So it's supposed to remove stains and make your hands white because it was very prized in terms of it was a sign of beauty,

but also to make them soft. And at the same time, it would clean the hands of impurities. So there are so many of these formulas that women would use and men as well. And books like these, they were not expensive. They were cheap. Well, relatively. cheap. Most people would be able to afford one or, you know, borrow one and literacy was spreading. So we know that this kind of knowledge was increasingly available to people. And yeah, and we know that people were using these formulas because so many of these books are annotated. They have, you know, people writing things like, this works, this doesn't, or I burnt myself, which is something I found with one of these formulas to remove bodily hair. It's like, this hurts. Like, no wonder, you're using

arsenic. Oh my God. That's wild. isn't it? But as a final question then, for just how clean were you at this period, have you ever found any like beauty tips or lotions or potions that actually you think has stood the test of time? Because it can't have all been insane arsenic, humoral theory. No, no. And I don't mean to be unfair to these recipes because many of them are, many of them do make sense. Many of them for things like untangling hair, this would be formulas using animal fat or olive oil and they would be perfumed with herbs. So they would work. I'm sure they would make your hair beautiful. And at the same time, things like soap, same thing. You would make soap. It would be

part of your kind of duties as the lady of the house, the woman of the house. You would know how to make soap. And if you were poor, you would make that yourself. If you had more money, you might have servants who would help you. But you would get the ashes. You would, you know, use lie and hubs. And you would make soap for the family. You would make soap to clean the body and the hair and they would be seasonal as well. So people did know a lot about what to use when in terms of herbs. And many of these things would work. We know, for instance, about women in Venice, it was very in to be blonde in 16th century Venice. It was like the height of beauty. So women would as a part of their beauty routine, they would wake up, they would change their chemise, they would comb their hair,

get rid of all of that. And if it was a sunny day, you would kind of wear this crownless hat. You would go up to the roof and you would have this product on your hair, this formula with things like lemon and it would bleach your hair. And you would be, you know, on the rooftop, like going blonde, all of that. And then you would look like a very fashionable lady. So we know that this would work using chamomile or lemon to bleach your hair. That would have worked. And it wouldn't necessarily have damaged it. So it's not all scary stuff. There are some formulas that do make sense. I think when you verge more towards alchemy territory and Paracelsian formulas and using metals, it starts getting a bit more dangerous. But these herbal recipes, most of them, they would have helped. I mean, why not?

And it's something that I want to start like recreating more sort of following Julesberg's example. Oh, that'd be fun, wouldn't it? Oh, for sure. Yeah. But it is tricky because so many of these recipes. And I think when you're... You can't be using arsenic anymore, can you? Or lead or any of the other stuff that's in this. I wouldn't. And the same goes, I think, for animal ingredients. I don't know how comfortable I would feel with, like, using bird poo.

No. That was something like if you were... But I mean, men would because there were many formulas for like if you were losing your hair as a man and you wanted to keep it, formulas would use like dove droppings, which is, yeah. But, you know, and I have no idea whether that worked to be. but some of these recipes could be recreated. It's just that there's so much that is expected of the reader. And I think that gives you a good idea of how much Renaissance people were expected to know about

hygiene and about cosmetics because so much was expected of them in terms of what does not need to be said in the recipe right. I think when you're following a recipe nowadays, most of them like for a cake, I don't know, a cake recipe. Even if you're not a very good baker, you can be able to. mostly follow the recipe. Whereas with older recipes, it's expected that you will know so much that it doesn't have to be said. Sometimes the quantities aren't explicit of ingredients, you know, or sometimes a plant is mentioned, but you don't know, like, is it fresh or is it dry or, I don't know,

is it the petals or the leaves, I don't know, you know. So you would have to experiment quite a lot to get to the same level of a kind of random Venetian merchant's wife, you know, and in terms of what she would know, right? So yeah, that's all. a lot of rambling, but that's just to say that people were worried about hygiene for different reasons than we are, mostly, I think, but they were worried about that. And they were thinking about how to keep themselves healthy. And that's the main thing with hygiene for them, right? So they were using friction, they were using perfumes, they were using all the weapons in their arsenal. They were washing the hair with water over basins. They were then keeping the head like nice and

warm so you wouldn't be putting yourself at risk. They were minding all these different things. And the thing that I found relatable about them, about Renaissance women, thinking about you and I nowadays, is that I often feel that we are kind of inundated with different conflicting advice from like influences and dermatologists and all kind of people. And you have no idea what is healthy and what isn't and what works and what doesn't. And it was the same for them because you're getting one kind of advice from your doctor and a different one from your mother-in-law. And then you buy the book that everyone's talking about and it's a different thing altogether. So I think there was a lot of anxiety about hygiene and bathing and all of that. But I think people were doing

their best and trying their hardest to be as healthy as possible. And that included being clean, you know. Julia, you have been marvelous to talk to you. Thank you so much. And if people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you? So I have a YouTube channel called Living History by Dr. Julia Martins and I have a blog with the same name and I write about all these things and many other ramblings as well. Thank you so much. Will you come back and talk to us about more Renaissance madness? Any time.

Any time. Thank you so much for having me, Kate. Oh, you've been a blast. Thank you for listening. And thank you so much to Julia for joining me. And if you like what you heard, don't forget to like review and follow along whatever it is you get your podcasts. Coming up, we are finishing Filthy Month with a look at the Victorians, the people who

love to tell us that everyone else in history was crap. But listen out next month to hear about the worst breakups in history. And if you'd like us to explore a subject, if you'd just wanted to say hello, then you can email us at betwixt at historyhit.com. This podcast was edited by Tim Arstall and produced by Sophie G. The Senior Producer is Freddie Chick. Join me again, Betwixt the Sheets,

The History of Sex Scandal and Society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.