WI: Bathing goes out of fashion early in Europe.

Bathing went out of fashion in Europe after the Black Death to such a degree that people thought bathing was unhealthy. What if this kind of fear of bathing struck those in Europe as early as the Antonine Plague of 165 AD? I'm sure there wouldn't be MASSIVE changes, but I'm sure there would be a different attitude to what constitutes "cleanliness" for the Romans and early European Kingdoms. I'm guessing the Romans would concentrate on different building projects too. For example, no Baths of Caracalla. Maybe the stereotype of High Middle Ages' people being filthy would actually be true in this TL?
 
I can't say this with any certainty or with any hard facts to back me up, but my instincts say that if the Romans turned away from bathing their cities may have shrunk even faster. That would open a lot of butterflies, at best.
 
Actually bathing went out of fashion earlier. The Church decried the "public" nudity of the Roman baths, even though they tended not to have male and females on the dame days/same places. Add to the general decline in GDP that accompanied the fall of the Roman Empire, and you have the end of the public baths. Cold water bathing, especially in temperate or cold climates is really not fun many months a year, and heating water for baths was an expense only the wealthy could afford. The combination of these events, plus the development of the "medical" idea that bathing was unhealthy struck a severe blow against bathing.
 
Assuming it sticks with the east west division the plage of Justinian may be worse, by some accounts it killed around 1/4 of the eastern roman empires population. With less hygiene you may see this increase in excess of 1/3 which could give the Persians the edge they need to break the otl stalemate between these two enough to push Rome out of the lvant at least and the middle east at best
 
Assuming it sticks with the east west division the plage of Justinian may be worse, by some accounts it killed around 1/4 of the eastern roman empires population. With less hygiene you may see this increase in excess of 1/3 which could give the Persians the edge they need to break the otl stalemate between these two enough to push Rome out of the lvant at least and the middle east at best


Couldn't the inverse be true too though? Without communal bathing being so common, people wouldn't be spreading nearly as much disease between each other. They weren't washing themselves off with soap back then.
 
Couldn't the inverse be true too though? Without communal bathing being so common, people wouldn't be spreading nearly as much disease between each other. They weren't washing themselves off with soap back then.
I suppose theoretically yes but I would assume that it would effect general health negatively based on comparing illness throughout history in society's with good and bad hygiene practices. I'm not saying it could not happen as you suggest but just based on historical examples I would bet on negative outcome as more likely.
 
The combination of these events, plus the development of the "medical" idea that bathing was unhealthy struck a severe blow against bathing.

This idea didn't develop until the 1300s as a response to the Bubonic plague. The plague turned bathhouses into hotspots of plague. Without germ theory it was thought that the bathhouses were drawing bad air. The other contributor to this idea is the fact that medieval Europeans had a different idea of bathing than we do. When medieval doctors wrote that people should limit bathing, they referred not to simply washing but the act of going to a bathhouse and spending most of the day there.
 
Top