Body cleansing

The toilet in ancient Greece

Among the Ancient Greeks, athletes could use oil and then a strigil, a curved instrument used to remove matter from the skin. The Metropolitan Museum has a bronze example dated to the 5th century BCE or later. Washing was therefore not necessarily based on the mixture of water and soap that seems familiar to us.

The object was part of a set including a small bottle of oil and a sponge. It shows that cleaning could combine several actions and accessories, rather than a single product.

Public bathhouses in Paris in the 19th and 20th centuries

The history of washing depends as much on housing as on soaps. In Paris, the first municipal shower baths appeared at the end of the 19th century, when many residents did not have a bathroom or hot water at home. These establishments provide access to a toilet that the material conditions of the home made difficult.

The Petitot shower baths, inaugurated in 1935, illustrate this social function. Their Art Deco building is designed to accommodate the public, with shower cabins.

From soap to soap-free cleaners

Soap comes from the transformation of fatty substances by an alkaline agent. Modern cleaners can also use other families of surfactants, grouped under the term syndets. This distinction does not follow the form of the product: a solid bar can be a syndet, and a liquid can contain soap. The transition to the bottle is therefore not enough to explain the gentleness of a formula.

The development of cleansers for sensitive skin

The development of syndets and lipid-replenishing formulas responds in particular to the difficulties of dry or sensitive skin. Removing visible fat is only part of the job: you must also limit interactions with the stratum corneum which protects the skin. Cleanser research therefore looks at the entire formula, not just its ability to lather.