CHAPTER III. 



THE ORIGIN OF SOAP. 



A HISTORY of soap would be very interesting. Who invent- 

 ed it ? When and where did it first come into common use ? 

 How did our remote ancestors wash themselves before soap 

 was invented ? These are historical questions that naturally 

 arise at first contemplation of the subject ; but, as far as we are 

 aware, historians have failed to answer them. We read a 

 great deal in ancient histories about anointing with oil and the 

 use of various cosmetics for the skin, but nothing about soap. 



These ancients must have been very greasy people, and I 

 suspect that they washed themselves pretty nearly in the same 

 way as modern engine-drivers clean their fingers, by wiping off 

 the oil with a bit of cotton-waste. 



We are taught to believe that the ancient Romans wrapped 

 themselves round with togas of ample dimensions, and that 

 these togas were white. Now, such togas, after incasing such 

 anointed oily skins, must have become very greasy. How did 

 the Roman laundresses or launders historians do not indicate 

 their sex remove this grease ? Historians are also silent on 

 this subject. 



A great many curious things were found buried under the 

 cinders of Vesuvius in Pompeii, and sealed up in the lava that 

 flowed over Herculaneum. Bread, wine, fruits, and other 

 domestic articles, including several luxuries of the toilet, such 

 as pomades or pomade-pots, and rouge for painting ladies' 

 faces, but no soap for washing them. In the British Museum 

 is a large variety of household requirements found in the pyra- 

 mids of Egypt, but there is no soap, and we have not heard of 

 any having been discovered there. 



Finding no traces of soap among the Romans, Greeks, or 

 Egyptians, we need not go back to the prehistoric " cave men, 1 ' 

 whose flint and bone implements were found imbedded side by 

 side with the remains of the mammoth bear and hyena in such 

 caverns as that at Torquay, where Mr. Pengelly has, during 

 the last eighteen years, so industriously explored. 



All our knowledge, and that still larger quantity, our igno- 



