By Alan Knight
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| Photo Credit: kimberlysnyder.com |
Believe it or not, the answer
fits in the palm of your hand: Soap!
The history of soap making and
usage goes hand-in-slippery-hand with the history of bathing. (See our previous blogs, “History
of European Bathing …” “Bathtubs
in the Old West,” and “The Birth
of the Bathtub.”)
Soaps ― there are many different
kinds ― are mainly used as surfactants for washing, bathing, and cleaning, but
they’re also used in textile spinning, as antiseptics, for various medicinal
purposes (such an antidote for various types of poisoning) and are components
of certain types of lubricating greases. Soaps are also used for decorative
purposes.
What’s in a Name?
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| Photo Credit: eupedia.com |
There are two schools of thought
concerning the origin of the word, “soap.” One legend has it that soap was
named for the fictional Mount Sapo, which was supposedly near Rome in Italy,
where ancient Romans made burnt animal sacrifice offerings to their pantheon of
deities. The wood ash and animal grease resulting from such sacrifices formed a
primitive kind of soap. However, another
school of thought says the word “soap” hails from Europe's ancient Celts,
whose animal fat/wood ash soap was called “saipo.”
Soap Through the Centuries
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| Photo Credit: docmo.hubpages.com |
Aside from making fire and
cooking food, blending oil and fat into soap is one of the oldest and simplest chemical reactions known to mankind. An
excavation of ancient Babylon revealed that the Babylonians were making soap
around 2800 B.C., being the first culture to master the art of soap making. A formula for soap consisting of water, alkali
and cassia oil was written on a Babylonian clay tablet around 2200 BC. Typically, their soap was made from animal
fats boiled with wood ashes. Initially,
soap was used for cleaning wool and cotton that was used in textile
manufacturing. Also in the Middle East,
the Ebers papyrus (Egypt, 1550 BC) reveals that the ancient Egyptians mixed
animal and vegetable oils with alkaline salts to produce a soap-like substance.
According the Pliny the Elder, the
Phoenicians used goat's tallow and wood ashes to create soap in 600 BC. In his “Historia Naturalis,” he discusses the
manufacturing of soap from animal fat and ashes, but mentions it was only used
as a hair pomade. Early Romans were
thought to have made some of their soap from urine (!). It was used throughout
the Roman Empire as a topical treatment for various skin diseases.
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| Photo Credit: mbeenos1.blogspot.com |
The purpose of soap as a cleanser
appeared in the second century AD. By the 900s AD, soap was common in France,
Italy, and Spain. A 12th-century Islamic
document describes the process of soap production. It mentions one of soap’s two main
ingredients, alkali, derived from the Arabic word al-qaly or “ashes,” which would
later become important in modern day chemistry.
By the 13th century, the manufacture of soap in the Islamic world had
become virtually industrialized.
Soap production began in England
around the end of the 12th century. In France, by the second half of the 15th
century, the semi-industrialized professional manufacturing of soap was
concentrated in a few cities that supplied the rest of the country. Finer soaps
were later produced in Europe beginning in the 16th century, using vegetable
oils (i.e., olive oil) as opposed to animal fats. Many of these soaps are still
produced, both industrially and by small-scale soap artisans. For instance,
Castile soap is a popular example of the vegetable-only soaps derived from the
oldest “white soap” of Italy and Spain, named for the latter country’s Castile
region. However, most European countries
rarely used soap as a personal cleanser until the 17th century (which is one of
the reasons perfumes and colognes were created, but that’s another story). Soap
manufacturers had to pay a heavy tax on all the soap they made, which made it
very expensive for most of its populace. So soap didn’t become a widespread commodity
until the tax was repealed in 1853. By
the 19th century, soap had become more readily available and was becoming
popular throughout Europe.
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| Photo Credit: gregbenzphotography.com |
Soap making was a small scale,
usually family-owned business until the Industrial Revolution. In 1780, Andrew Pears started making a high-quality,
transparent soap. His family-derived soap-making business expanded when his
son-in-law, Thomas J. Barrat, opened a soap factory in 1862. James Keir built a soap factory
after he’d discovered a method for extracting alkaline products from potash and
soda. Nearly 30 years later,
American manufacturer, Benjamin
T. Babbitt, introduced marketing innovations that included the sale of bar soap
and the mass distribution of his soap samples. William Hesketh Lever and his
brother, James, bought a small soap works in in 1886 and founded what is still
one of the largest soap businesses, formerly Lever Brothers, now called Unilever.
Industrially manufactured bar
soaps first became available in the late 18th century, as advertising campaigns
in Europe and the United States promoted the growing awareness of the
relationship between cleanliness and health, especially as the understanding of
microbiology and disease continued to unfold.
Today, the use of soap has become
universal in industrialized nations due to a better understanding of the role
of hygiene in reducing the population size and virility of pathogenic
microorganisms.
The ABCs of S-o-a-p
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| Photo Credit: dowdycornerscookbookclub.com |
Soap is created by the
combination of fats and oils with an alkaline base. From ancient times and even today, soap is derived
from a combination of different types of fats:
Animal-based (tallow ― made from
beef, sheep and other animals’ fat suet, which is the hard, white fat on the
kidneys and loins of animals)
Plant-based (beeswax, canola, cocoa
butter, coconut, olive, laurel, palm, peanut, soybean, etc.)
In a process known as
saponification, soap is made when a fatty acid comes in contact with an
alkali. When fats or oils are combined
with a strong alkali, the alkali first splits the fats or oils into fatty acids
and glycerin. The glycerin is a useful
by-product, which can be left in the soap product as a softening agent, or
extracted for other uses.
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| Photo Credit: churchstreeteats.com |
The type of alkali metal used
determines the kind of soap product. Sodium soaps, prepared from sodium
hydroxide, are firm, whereas potassium soaps, derived from potassium hydroxide,
are softer or often in liquid form.
Soaping it Up
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| Photo Credit: simplybudgeted.com |
Walk down any supermarket aisle
today and you’ll find numerous different types of soap and soap-derived
cleaning products: solid soaps, liquid soaps, body soaps, specialty facial soaps,
shampoos, decorative soaps, toothpastes, shaving soap, laundry detergents, dishwashing
detergents, rug detergents, boot soaps, and various household cleaning
products. And don’t forget all the
different kinds of lubricants with soap as their main ingredient (especially as
what’s sold in automotive specialty and hardware stores).
A somewhat recent “re-development”
is the crafting and sale of handmade soaps by contemporary private soap
artisans as well as interested DIYers. Most
of these soap recipes usually use all-natural ingredients, and some are
entirely vegan, that is, not made of any animal products. Many have delicious-sounding names such as
Chocolate Mint, Bit o’ Honey, Oatmeal, Lavendar/Rosemary, Almond Nut and others.
A perusal of your local health food
store and/or the Internet will bring an entire world of exotic soaps to your
bathroom and kitchen.
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| Photo Credit: insiderye.wordpress.com |
In this article, I briefly
described the centuries-old history of soap-making. I also discussed how soap
is made, and pointed out its various usages, products and byproducts. If you have a comment, please type it in the
Comment section below. Of course, I encourage you to share this
article with your family, friends, and colleagues.
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Have a question? Feel free to contact me at the number or email listed below and I’ll personally get back to you. Thanks for reading; it’s been my pleasure to share this information with you.
Have a question? Feel free to contact me at the number or email listed below and I’ll personally get back to you. Thanks for reading; it’s been my pleasure to share this information with you.
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Alan Knight is the owner of Tub King, Inc., and SeniorBathtub.com in Jacksonville,
Florida. He has many years of experience in the antique and senior bathtub
industries. His companies not only provide superior products, they are also
award winners, receiving the “Best of Jacksonville Chamber Award” four years
running. To contact Tub King directly, call (800)843-4231 or email alan@tubking.com.
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