People normally associate different epochs with different smells. The Middle Ages smell of sewage and decaying bodies. German writer Patrick Suskind, the author of a well-known novel “Perfume: The Story of a Murderer,” wrote in his book that the stench of European cities in the late Middle Ages period was unbearable. His work conveys the terrible smell of human faeces and urine in the streets, decaying wood and rat dung, spoiled coal and animal fat, mouldy dust and chamber pots.
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Stench used to be an inseparable part of all human activities, constructive or destructive. The Queen of Spain Isabel of Castle (the end of the 15th century) confessed that she had taken a bath only twice in a lifetime – when born and married. A daughter of one of French kings died of lice. Dysentery and scab caused fatal terminations to Popes Clement V and Clement VII correspondingly. Duke Norfolk neglected bathing for religious reasons. As a result of such disregard numerous abscesses dotted his body.
A billet-doux sent by the inveterate Don Juan Henry of Navarre to his sweetheart Gabrielle d' Estrées became an anecdote. Its contents conveyed the following meaning: “Do not wash yourself, my sweetheart, I’ll visit you in three weeks”. The king himself took a bath only thrice in a lifetime, twice coercively.
Russian ambassadors at Louis XIV court wrote that His Majesty stunk like a wild animal. Europeans considered Russians perverts because it was a tradition for the latter to take steam baths once a month.
European cities were buried in sewage. Town residents splashed the contents of garbage pails and washtubs out into the street on the heads of carefree passers-by. Stagnated slops made stinking pools; and a great number of town pigs crowned the whole picture. People emptied chamber pots right out of their windows making streets look like cesspools. Bathrooms were the rarest luxury. Fleas, lice and bugs swarmed in rich and poor houses of London and Paris.
Unsanitary conditions, diseases and starvation personify medieval Europe as it was. Even the noble class could not afford to eat their fill. Noble families were happy if at best two or three of ten children survived. Delivery was quite an undertaking for women: a third part of them died in labor. Street illumination also was poor – oil lamps, splinters or wax candles at best. Hunger, smallpox, leprosy and syphilis disfigured people’s faces.
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