Analysis / The Dung Ages

In some respects, the Middle Ages were a rather clean era; the Roman bathing culture survived well into
the 14th century and public saunas were commonplace everywhere in Europe. In rural areas away from
the urban centers, people bathed regularly in ponds or streams.
It was The Black Death (ironically) that signaled the death of this bathing culture: fear of pestilence closed
the public baths, and had a detrimental effect on social conventions like changing one's clothing regularly
and concern about body odor that might be familiar to those who experienced long Covid lockdowns.
This led to the genuinely filthy hygiene of the Renaissance and the New Age following it: the spread of
plague, syphilis, and the end of the Medieval Warm Period effectively killed the sauna culture everywhere
in Europe outside the regions where it was practically a winter survival technique- Scandinavia,
mountainous areas, Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Russia. Europe really recovered only with the
spread of the modern sanitation in the 19th century, although bathing (now private rather than communal)
at least made a comeback during the reign of the obsessively fastidious Louis XIV. For a while, it was
even fashionable for wealthy ladies to have their portraits painted in the bath.
Similarly, dental hygiene had been a common practice for thousands of years by this point, and continued
to be so- it's not difficult to make the connection between cleaning one's teeth regularly and avoiding bad
breath and painful tartar buildup. While proper bristled toothbrushes would take time to spread beyond
Central Asia, they were invented in this time period, and the basic concept of scrubbing and picking one's
teeth with a stiff feather or frayed stick is mentioned as far back as Mesopotamian writings. Additionally,
the sugar- and acid-related dental problems of our times were almost unheard of, cavities being the worry
of elders whose enamel had been worn down over decades by the grit from stone-ground grain and flour.
Again, it was during the Renaissance, when sugar and flavorful acidic foods moved from exotic luxuries to
common fare, that teeth became an endangered species among the major world trade powers of the day.
Another common misunderstanding is the era's average life expectancy being in the mid-30s. This is
technically true, but it was driven by the high rate of infant and child mortality. If you managed to survive
your childhood, you had a fair chance of living into your 50s or 60s if not higher.
The dung, however, was absolutely real. Most middle age cities had a "Shit Creek" or something similarly
named, where all the sewage and waste flowed to and was dumped, and the unbearable foulness of such
cesspools was well documented. Likewise, with no underground sewers, human waste was, at best,
collected in open-air sewage canals, and at worst dumped into the street. Similarly, pack animals were
necessary for moving goods through the city, and urine and manure of horses and other ungulates was
certainly common on the unpaved streets. Obviously enough, this was much worse in the poorer, more
densely populated areas of the cities, and these poor sanitation conditions contributed greatly to recurring
disease in the middle ages. Pit latrines were possible to dig, but those of course filled up sooner or later,
necessitating that they be emptied - as in, someone had to go in there with a shovel and bucket and clean
them out.note This was not usually necessary in rural areas, where pit latrines could be filled in when full
and a new one dug some distance away. In cities, space was limited and there were a lot more people
using the latrine, so filling it in for a new one was impractical. Animal dung could be used for agricultural
purpose, however.
In terms of smell, in a relatively clean city that enjoyed good weather, you could probably expect
something like a barnyard. It's hardly impossible to adjust to and become comfortable with a barnyard
odor, so people in such cities probably weren't especially bothered by it. If the city was not so fortunate, or
if conditions had declined, a sewer-ish smell of rot and decay was definitely possible and, as you might
1imagine, widely lamented.