Could Christianity have encouraged cleanliness

Ok, imagine day like this and tell me how might it influence you:
You wake up at 5 am
go to the barn/stable
throw the crap out of it and clean it,
feed the animals
give them water
milk them
bring the milk home and cook it
use the bread from day before throw it in the hot milk.
gather the family, there is only one woden spoon in the house, everyone takes one bite and passes the spoon, and soo it goest till there is no more food
go out, take crap behind the house
send the kids to look after the animals and herd them
have sex with your wife (and its great she didnt wash for the last 40 days, nor did you, now she finaly smells like a real woman-this was a popular medieval opinion, like most people prefer clean and shaved people then prefered smelly and hairy)
Get zipped/pull the skirt down
go to orchard - pick some apples and bring them home (wormed apples were prefered since that meant they are ripe for picking)
mix the flour, bake the bread take it out to cool
pet the dog go to get the kids, close the animals in, milk them feed them close them in
go in the house
Give apples to the kids
eat the diner
lay on the hay on the floor
go to sleep

So imagine that you or anyone else you deal with never washes anything, from hands to private areas. So your mother, which makes your meal has a mixture of feces, urine, sperm, sweat, dirt from the land, dung, saliva, spit, snort etc...all that on her hands, as she is making it. And everyone you deal with has that same mixture. Inevitably you will rub your eyes, feel the teeth wich hurts you, since of course you dont wash them, so that cute little mixture ends up in your mouth, your food, your eyes, your nose, your private areas. Yeah.. think you are right, that is not going to influence your health at all!!
 
Ok, imagine day like this and tell me how might it influence you:
You wake up at 5 am
go to the barn/stable
throw the crap out of it and clean it,
feed the animals
give them water
milk them
bring the milk home and cook it
use the bread from day before throw it in the hot milk.
gather the family, there is only one woden spoon in the house, everyone takes one bite and passes the spoon, and soo it goest till there is no more food
go out, take crap behind the house
send the kids to look after the animals and herd them
have sex with your wife (and its great she didnt wash for the last 40 days, nor did you, now she finaly smells like a real woman-this was a popular medieval opinion, like most people prefer clean and shaved people then prefered smelly and hairy)
Get zipped/pull the skirt down
go to orchard - pick some apples and bring them home (wormed apples were prefered since that meant they are ripe for picking)
mix the flour, bake the bread take it out to cool
pet the dog go to get the kids, close the animals in, milk them feed them close them in
go in the house
Give apples to the kids
eat the diner
lay on the hay on the floor
go to sleep

So imagine that you or anyone else you deal with never washes anything, from hands to private areas. So your mother, which makes your meal has a mixture of feces, urine, sperm, sweat, dirt from the land, dung, saliva, spit, snort etc...all that on her hands, as she is making it. And everyone you deal with has that same mixture. Inevitably you will rub your eyes, feel the teeth wich hurts you, since of course you dont wash them, so that cute little mixture ends up in your mouth, your food, your eyes, your nose, your private areas. Yeah.. think you are right, that is not going to influence your health at all!!

And yet Jewish or Islamic (or indeed Roman) levels of personal hygene set by law, religion or society had absolutely no discernible impact on the life expectancies across the population as a whole.

Which tends to suggest only the elite were able to follow these rules and even then their effectiveness given the other hazards of disease, famine, war etc was fairly minimal.

Unless of course you have EVIDENCE to support conjecture
 
Well being obliged to take bath after sex, birth, menstruation etc.. had certain impact. Most of the people bathed at least once a week.
They also had to wash the hand, face, hair, feet, mouth, nose every time before the prayer. They are obliged to clean themself with watter if posible after defecating,
So basicaly you had people who washed 5 times a day minimaly, against people who dont even wash their hands unless completely necesary and who wash 2-3 times a year at the maximum
 
And yet Jewish or Islamic (or indeed Roman) levels of personal hygene set by law, religion or society had absolutely no discernible impact on the life expectancies across the population as a whole.

Which tends to suggest only the elite were able to follow these rules and even then their effectiveness given the other hazards of disease, famine, war etc was fairly minimal.

Unless of course you have EVIDENCE to support conjecture

I dont have evidence, but since you are convinced it doesnt change anything why dont you go and live like I described for lets say 3 months and see how that affects you.
 
Well being obliged to take bath after sex, birth, menstruation etc.. had certain impact. Most of the people bathed at least once a week.
They also had to wash the hand, face, hair, feet, mouth, nose every time before the prayer. They are obliged to clean themself with watter if posible after defecating,
So basicaly you had people who washed 5 times a day minimaly, against people who dont even wash their hands unless completely necesary and who wash 2-3 times a year at the maximum

.....and yet the life expectancy was similar

Presumably because of issues such as communual bathing areas could promote disease transfer as well as cleanliness may prevent.

I have decided - because I bothered to look at the facts rather than rely on hearsay.

It is undisputed that the Islamic, Roman and Japanese socirties bathed more frequently than medieval europe. It is not the case that this nesscessarily had a huge impact on life expectancy.

Even in medieval europe bathing was far more common than you believe. For example Paris had 40 bath houses and Corboda had 300 but that doesn't mean that Parisians did not bath - only that they did it less frequently. The few times a year is true for some elements of society but not for all.

If you post on an (alt) history site there is some expectation you make an effort to do some research.
 
Yeah - it's not the fact that at the margin cleaniless is good for you - it is. Documented evidence of Muslim imams in the "Golden Age" suggest life expectancies of close to modern day longevity (although this is something of a self selecting group as imams were generally acknowledged for their knowledge and experience which tends to argue for a longe life even to enter the grouping).

The problem is suggesting that Jewish cleanliness rituals would extend life expectancy for the population as a whole for which there is little evidence to support. Either most of the population paid lip service to the rituals or the rituals themselves introduced other risk factors or there actually was no impact on death rates.
 

mowque

Banned
The problem is suggesting that Jewish cleanliness rituals would extend life expectancy for the population as a whole for which there is little evidence to support. Either most of the population paid lip service to the rituals or the rituals themselves introduced other risk factors or there actually was no impact on death rates.

Thank you for putting it better then me.
 
The Japanese did'nt just start becoming long-lived recently, they regularly lived into their 70's and beyond during the period Europeans were lucky to make it to their 50's.

Now while their diet is part of it, the Japanese have also always been very cleanly, for example bathing every day or every other day, scrubbing the body with soap and water while sitting and then rinsing it off and then getting in the hot water of the bath, thus keeping water that was used by multiple people for bathing from becoming dirty.

The Japanese were not by any means approaching the 70s with any kind of regularity, when taken as a whole population, until very late in history. In fact, Industrial-Revolution Japan had comparable life expectancies to pretty much anywhere in Europe, and only shot sky-high after WW2 concluded.

Prior to the Meiji, it's hard to say for me, I'm not a specialist and I someone would have to find some serious statistical studies to put it one way or the other.
 
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