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No Soap

Bathing, The Yellow Press

Following the news that overuse of antibiotics has resulted in a proliferation of nasty little chemical resistant superbugs at the same time as a weakening of the immune system attributed to that same overuse comes the news that just plain soap may not be all that healthful either.
Let us consider how the pioneers made soap. First they slayed a large mammal, any would do, and after eating the meat, making shoes from the hide, painting the skull with mandalas and making whistles and flutes from the deep resonant leg bones they took the remaining fat and offal and boiled it in a large vat to seperate the grease. Then they dumped the leftover ashes from the fire into the grease, stirring it feverishly till well saponified and then allowed it to cool. The congealed mass was soap, it was cut into bars and once a year manly men strode into frigid streams and bathed with it. Women were more frequent in their ablutions, even then they had more self respect. For the pioneers this was enough.
Even today soap is made in much the same way, ask around. Oh yes we add perfumes and colorants and mold the substance into little duck and seashell shapes but truth is it’s all still fats and lye. That’s what makes it work. The caustic nature if the mixture kills everything it touches by alkali burn. It instantly corrodes the protective membrane off a bug or a germ or a virus on contact. You bathe with it and it kills everything, bacteria, skin cells, the beneficial microscopic lice that live on your eyelids, everything.
There was a reason baths were infrequent in olden times, the body is an ancient, well designed system that has worked well as long as it maintains its protective rime. A swim now and then is benign, even good for one as is the occasional cold shower but the evidence indicates that only the mildest soaps, formulated of sodium laurel sulfate and benzyl peroxode should be used. Once every two weeks is plenty, any more than that is just lining the pockets of Unilever and ablating the epidermis.

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