The controversial mayor of New York, Zahran Mamdani, announced to the public the decision to install bidets in the restrooms of the official city headquarters, as if asking others to follow his example and reduce their use of toilet paper. Many people welcomed his idea, especially those who, including myself, suffered from being in the wrong place at the wrong time, after getting used to using the somewhat primitive yet advanced bidet.
This implies that the idea of using toilet paper is advanced and very hygienic compared to what came before. But the funny thing, or perhaps the comfort for most people, is that they coexist and seem perfectly content with what they have, as long as they do not find anything better. This applies to methods of relieving oneself, bathing, laundry, cleaning the houses and even the food we eat. The struggle begins when we discover that there are better options, but they are not easily accessible. Historically, humans used to walk on foot until animals were domesticated for transportation.
Then, walking became a struggle. Then, the wheel was invented, which led to the invention of the car, the automobile, the locomotive, and the airplane. People refused to ride animals, even though a mule was once considered a Cadillac. The use of a bidet is relatively new and not widely known, except in a few countries. More than two-thirds of the world’s population still use either toilet paper or other similar cleaning materials.
The most advanced and expensive toilet systems used in public and private restrooms are found in Japan. Similar, less complex and less expensive cleaning methods are used in Turkiye, Egypt and Italy, and are far superior to using toilet paper, plant leaves, straw, smooth stones or small pieces of pottery, which were used in ancient Greece, or clothes and rags that were used and then washed or discarded.
It is worth noting that the West only became familiar with toilet paper in the 19th century, although China had known about it 1,300 years earlier. In France and some other European countries, the bidet, a low-lying basin of water, was introduced and are still used today. In pre-Christian Rome, a sponge attached to a stick was used, dipped in water mixed with salt or vinegar, and rotated among users before being returned to the basin.
During the Middle Ages, the Church prohibited bathing, especially frequently. Its relationship with bathing was complex and fluctuating. Its emphasis on cleanliness prompted it to restrict public baths due to the nudity, mingling and frivolity associated with them. The spread of epidemics, such as the plague from the 14th century onward, reinforced the belief that the opening of the skin’s pores by hot baths made the body more susceptible to ‘corrupt vapors’. Consequently, bathing declined in Europe for centuries. This contributed to the popular perception of Europe as ‘dirty’.
This decline was not solely a theological decision by the Church, but a combination of health anxieties and a monastic morality inclined towards asceticism and minimizing bodily pleasures. As a result, bodily hygiene became a lesser priority in Christian Europe, compared to the emphasis on cleanliness among Muslims. With the decline of public and private baths, people began disposing of waste outside the home, in ditches and open areas, or in latrines that served as toilets within the house.
Obstacles to reform multiplied and became more complex due to the Church’s insistence on ‘excessive modesty’, stemming from a superstitious belief linking the devil to bathing. As a result, epidemics spread and, over time, decimated the populations of villages and cities. The consequences of the Protestant Reformation in Europe exacerbated the neglect of health, as people feared that the devil would possess the body when exposed to water and soap. The sanitary infrastructure known to humankind 2,000 years ago was neglected.
Even in the grand palaces of Europe, people began to dispose of their waste wherever and whenever they pleased after the era of luxurious Roman baths ended around 500 AD with the fall of the Roman Empire to the barbarians, who destroyed the baths and their terracotta aqueducts. This, in addition to ignorance prevalent in the Middle Ages, and the Church’s focus on the soul over the body, which it considered reprehensible, led to a decline in hygiene, limiting it to the bare necessities, such as concealing body odor. The wealthy masked their odors by spraying themselves with perfumes, unlike the poor, whose bodies were utterly filthy.
