The History of Soap

Cleaning up thru the ages?

Soap is a substance that, when used with water, reduces surface tension to attract dirt and oil away from skin or other materials such as clothing. Soap acts as a "surfactant" which means it helps water to soak in, rather than remain in tight droplets. Soap molecules have a head that attracts water, and a tail that repels water. When mixed with water, soap molecules push their tails up through the surface of water to get away. These tails poking up through water cause water to spread out and thoroughly "wet" a surface. Soap works by attaching itself to dirt with it's tail, the head is attracted to water and that suspends the molecule until water rinses it off, carrying away both dirt and soap...and why thorough rinsing is so important.

There are many stories about how soap was invented. I am sure some form of soap was used in prehistoric times, maybe not what we call soap, but some type of "cleaning" agent. Since water is essential for life, the earliest people lived near water and knew something about its cleansing properties.

In early times a soap-like substance was extracted from plants such as soapwort, soap root, soapbark, yucca, horsetail, fuchsia leaves, bouncing bet, and the agave plants. You can still use these plants to make that type of "soap" today.

A soap-like material found in clay cylinders during the excavation of ancient Babylon is evidence that soap making was known as early as 2800 B.C. Inscriptions on the cylinders say that fats were boiled with ashes, which is a method of making soap, but do not refer to the purpose of the "soap." Such materials were later used as hair styling aids.

Records show that ancient Egyptians bathed regularly. The Ebers Papyrus, a medical document from about 1500 B.C., describes combining animal and vegetable oils with alkaline salts to form a soap-like material used for treating skin diseases, as well as for washing

At about the same time, Moses gave the Israelites detailed laws governing personal cleanliness. He also related cleanliness to health and religious purification. Biblical accounts suggest that the Israelites knew that mixing ashes and oil produced a kind of hair gel.

The early Greeks bathed for aesthetic reasons and apparently did not use soap. Instead, they cleaned their bodies with blocks of clay, sand, pumice and ashes, then anointed themselves with oil, and scraped off the oil and dirt with a metal instrument known as a strigil. They also used oil with ashes. Clothes were washed without soap in streams

Soap got its name, according to an ancient Roman legend, from Mount Sapo, where animals were sacrificed. Rain-washed a mixture of melted animal fat, or tallow, and wood ashes down into the clay soil along the Tiber River. Women found that this clay mixture made their wash cleaner with much less effort.

The ancient Germans and Gauls are also credited with discovering a substance called soap, made of tallow and ashes, they used to tint their hair red.

As Roman civilization advanced, so did bathing. The first of the famous Roman baths, supplied with water from their aqueducts, was built about 312 B.C. The baths were luxurious, and bathing became very popular. By the second century A.D., the Greek physician, Galen, recommended soap for both medicinal and cleansing purposes.

After the fall of Rome in 467 A.D. and the resulting decline in bathing habits, much of Europe felt the impact of filth upon public health. This lack of personal cleanliness and related unsanitary living conditions contributed heavily to the great plagues of the middle Ages, and especially to the Black Death of the 14th century. It wasn't until the 17th century that cleanliness and bathing started to come back into fashion in much of Europe. Still there were areas of the medieval world where personal cleanliness remained important. Daily bathing was a common custom in Japan during the Middle Ages. And in Iceland, pools warmed with water from hot springs were popular gathering places on Saturday evenings.

Soap making was an established craft in Europe by the seventh century. Soapmaker guilds guarded their trade secrets closely. Vegetable and animal oils were used with ashes of plants, along with fragrance. Gradually more varieties of soap became available for shaving and shampooing, as well as bathing and laundering.

Italy, Spain and France were early centers of soap manufacturing, due to their ready supply of raw materials such as oil from olive trees. The English began making soap during the 12th century. The soap business was so good that in 1622, King James I granted a monopoly to a soapmaker for $100,000 a year. Well into the 19th century, soap was heavily taxed as a luxury item in several countries. When the high tax was removed, soap became available to ordinary people, and cleanliness standards improved.

Commercial soap making in the American colonies began in 1608 with the arrival of several soapmakers on the second ship from England to reach Jamestown, VA. However, for many years, soap making stayed essentially a household chore. Eventually, professional soapmakers began regularly collecting waste fats from households, in exchange for some soap.

A major step toward large-scale commercial soap making occurred in 1791 when a French chemist, Nicholas Leblanc, patented a process for making soda ash, or sodium carbonate, from common salt. Soda ash is the alkali obtained from ashes that combines with fat to form soap. The Leblanc process yielded quantities of good quality, inexpensive soda ash.

The science of modern soap making was born some 20 years later with the discovery by Michel Eugene Chevreul, another French chemist, of the chemical nature and relationship of fats, glycerin and fatty acids. His studies established the basis for both fat and soap chemistry.

COWGIRLS AT THE ROUND-UP -- 1911
PHOTOGRAPH USED WITH PERMISSION OF PENDLETON COWGIRL COMPANY, STERLING PRESS 1994; ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Early American settlers made soap themselves, saving up cooking grease and animal fat for soap making day. Their soap making methods were not the precise science of today. Some of their batches of soap were not so successful earning the infamous nickname "lye soap."

Also important to the advancement of soap technology was the mid-1800s invention by the Belgian chemist, Ernest Solvay, of the ammonia process, which also used common table salt, or sodium chloride, to make soda ash. Solvay's process further reduced the cost of obtaining this alkali, and increased both the quality and quantity of the soda ash available for manufacturing soap.

These scientific discoveries, together with the development of power to operate factories, made soap making one of America's fastest-growing industries by 1850. At the same time, its broad availability changed soap from a luxury item to an everyday necessity. With this widespread use came the development of milder soaps for bathing and soaps for use in the washing machines that were available to consumers by the turn of the century.

In 1806, William Colgate opened Colgate & Company in New York, buying a giant kettle to make 45,000 lb. soap batches in, becoming the first big soap company here in America. He was followed by William Proctor and James Gamble, who had an employee that left for lunch one day, and left the soap mixing machine on, beating air into the soap batch, unintentionally creating the world's first "floating soap," Ivory. Harley Procter, son of the original Proctor was inspired with "Ivory's" name one day while sitting in church, he heard the forty-fifth psalm - "All thy garments smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia, out of the ivory palaces, where they have made thee glad"

Out in the west, B. J. Johnson Company was making soap entirely of vegetable oils, palm and olive. The soap they produced became so popular, they renamed their company after the soap Palmolive...although today's Palmolive soap recipe is not the same soap as the original....it now, like most commercial soaps, contains primarily animal fat.

England's Lever Brothers sent over some of their staff to start soap making here in America and developed Lifebuoy, which was initially sold as an antiseptic soap, but its formulation was changed when it did not sell well. Along with Lifebuoy, the term "B.O." (body odor) was coined. Advertising came into vogue and the threat of the much-dreaded and socially unacceptable B.O. made an excellent selling tool for soapmakers!

The chemistry of soap manufacturing stayed essentially the same until 1916, when the first synthetic detergent was developed in Germany in response to a World War I-related shortage of fats for making soap.

So there was a need to find another way to make soap. Synthetic detergents were born and revolutionized the soap making industry; not necessarily for the better, but it was a cheaper way to produce soap. These chemical filled detergents are not true soap! Unfortunately they are cheaper to make and set the standard most people judge soap prices by. Cheaper is not better.

Currently, only a small percentage of the industry uses age-old methods for making soap. Standard grocery store soap recipes include tallow, coconut oil, chemical sudsing agents and things I cannot pronounce.

Soap making started with the use of animal fats, but the soapmakers of today know pure vegetable oils and natural ingredients make a superior bar of soap that is skin friendly, beneficial and luxurious. The fragile skin of babies, elderly, people with cancer & eczema especially benefit by handmade soap!