The History of Toilet Paper: Weird Facts of an Important Innovation

Sheryl Crow thinks that somehow the environment would be improved if we all used only one sheet of toilet paper at a time. I don't think this plan would improve my environment, and I suspect others would agree with that.

But it did make me think about alternatives. We take toilet paper for granted. It's there, we use it, and we don't notice it unless it's gone and we have to scream for someone to bring more, or do the duck walk out to the closet to get some from the stash, or - worst of all - make our way to the kitchen for the dread paper towel option.

For the most part, we never think about where it came from, or what people did without it.

Toilet Habits: An Ancient History

Civilization may have begun with decent toilet habits. After all, no one wants to live close to others who don't clean things properly down there, and to live in a city you had to be close to others.

But since paper wasn't invented until much later in history, people had to make do with a variety of things that were not toilet paper. Poor people often just went right into the river, and splashed off their bottoms afterward; this is what many of the poorest people do today. The wealthy used a variety of other solutions, mostly designed to remove debris and make things smell nice, not to eliminate bacteria.

The Romans had some other solutions. Poorer people used public restrooms, and their solution was a sponge on a stick soaking in salt water; you did your necessary, and then you dunked the stick back into the salt water bucket. Early morning, right after the bucket was changed, probably was the best time to go. Wealthy Romans used the much softer wool soaked in rosewater, which smelled much nicer but was probably less effective at germ-fighting. The Vikings used discarded wool as well.

In the Middle Ages, balls of hay or discarded husks were the object of choice; for those tough jobs, a gompf stick (a sort of scraper) kept in the privy was used to remove stubborn bits.The Introduction Of Paper