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The HISTORY of SOAP
The origins of personal cleanliness date back to prehistoric times. Since water
is essential for life, the earliest people lived near water and knew something
about its cleansing properties - at least that it rinsed mud off their hands.
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, that 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. Soap-maker 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 soap-maker 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 soap-makers on the second ship from England to reach Jamestown, VA.
However, for many years, soap-making stayed essentially a household chore.
Eventually, professional soap-makers 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.
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.
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. Known today simply as detergents, synthetic detergents are non-soap
washing and cleaning products that are "synthesized" or put together chemically
from a variety of raw materials. The discovery of detergents was also driven by
the need for a cleaning agent that, unlike soap, would not combine with the
mineral salts in water to form an insoluble substance known as soap curd.
Household detergent production in the United States began in the early 1930s,
but did not really take off until after World War II. The war-time interruption
of fat and oil supplies as well as the military's need for a cleaning agent that
would work in mineral-rich sea water and in cold water had further stimulated
research on detergents.
The first detergents were used chiefly for hand dishwashing and fine fabric
laundering. The breakthrough in the development of detergents for all-purpose
laundry uses came in 1946, when the first "built" detergent (containing a
surfactant/builder combination) was introduced in the U.S. The surfactant is a
detergent product's basic cleaning ingredient, while the builder helps the
surfactant to work more efficiently. Phosphate compounds used as builders in
these detergents vastly improved performance, making them suitable for cleaning
heavily soiled laundry.
By 1953, sales of detergents in this country had surpassed those of soap. Now
detergents have all but replaced soap-based products for laundering, dishwashing
and household cleaning. Detergents (alone or in combination with soap) are also
found in many of the bars and liquids used for personal cleansing.
Today a “bar of soap” may not be labeled “soap.”
That is because it is not –it is a petroleum or synthetic based bar of
detergent. At Cedar Creek we manufacture SOAP – 100% soap made from soybean
oil.
Each batch of Cedar Creek Soap is carefully
measured to within 2/10th’s of an ounce to ensure quality and consistency. It
takes 4-6 weeks for each batch of soap to cure before it is available for
purchase. We use only the purest essential oils for scent and aromatherapy
benefits. Our soaps do not contain lanolin or animal fat. And… the only
animals they have been tested on are our families.
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