What did ancient people use to wash clothes?

Soap locust washing clothes

Ice alkali

Animal oil is mixed with things made in plant ash. Wait a minute.

The ancients first used plant ash for washing. "Book of Rites" says: "When the crown is dirty, it should be washed with ash", because plant ash contains potassium carbonate which can remove oil. "Kao" says "Xu Bo ... you can seduce them", which is the ashes of shells. When it reacts with plant ash water, it can generate a strong alkali-potassium hydroxide. In the Han dynasty, people also knew how to use "stone alkali" to burn in the sky to wash clothes. In Jin Dynasty, starch and spices were added to caustic soda to make ingots for sale, named "fragrant alkali". Li Shizhen's Compendium of Materia Medica recorded the production of artificial alkaloids at that time, saying: "Alkaloids came from Jining, Shandong Province, and were collected from Polygonum Artemisia. Soak in water, dry in the sun, burn with raw water, spray juice with raw water, and introduce two or three kilograms of flour per hundred. After a long time, it condenses into stones, and even juice is sold everywhere. "

In ancient times, there was also a kind of "bath bean", which was made of powder made of medicine and bean powder as bath products. Bath beans were first used in Buddhism. According to Buddhist scriptures, bath beans are one of the eighteen things that monks carry with them, also called bean crumbs. Volume 26 of Five Buddhist Scriptures says: "When a monk bathes, he wipes a tree with his back and splashes it with water, hurting his body. Buddha's words: No. Listen to decontamination materials such as peach skin, ground floor skin and bath beans. " It means that when the Buddha was alive, there was a monk taking a bath. Because water couldn't wash his body, he rubbed his back on the bark to remove dirt and was injured. The Buddha taught him to use bath beans to remove dirt. It is recorded in Shi Shuo Xin Yu that Wang Dunchu married the princess of the Jin Dynasty, and when he went to the toilet, he mistakenly poured the bath beans for cleaning his hands into the water to eat as snacks, which became an eternal joke. This record shows that bath beans have been used by the royal family in China, at least in the Wei and Jin Dynasties.

With the prevalence of Buddhism, especially in the Tang Dynasty, bath beans gradually became the exclusive washing products of princes and nobles, but ordinary people never saw them again. Later, Sun Simiao, Wang Dao and many other physicians, with the aim of "making everyone know, everyone knows", combined Buddhism and herbal medicine on the basis of the original bathing function, and constantly innovated or improved their production methods. For example, in the formula of bath beans contained in the medical book "Wai Tai", bath beans are added with flower juice such as papaya, peach blossom and cherry blossom, so that they have both the efficacy of fragrance and the efficacy of cleaning and beautifying. After the mid-Tang Dynasty, with the spread of doctors' production techniques and efficacy through words, bath beans, as a bath product with dual functions of fitness and beauty, were accepted and loved by people and became a folk custom. For example, Wenchang Zhalu said: "It happened in the Tang Dynasty, and Tu Su wine existed in the Yuan Dynasty ... oral fat, flour medicine and bath beans can be used in Latin America."

In the 37th chapter of Biography of Heroes of Children in Qing Dynasty, the elder sister ran to the steps to wash her hands. She "washed and washed, wiped the old soap, and made some sweet-scented osmanthus and rose pancreases." At that time, almost all the detergents used by rich people were used. And what are "pancreas" and "soap" in this article? It turns out that in the Southern and Northern Dynasties, Jia Sixie once mentioned using pig pancreas to remove dirt. Sun Simiao's "Thousand Golden Formulas" is a formula of grinding washed pig pancreas into paste and making granules with bean flour and spices. This is the ancient pancreas, also known as "bath beans". In the Ming and Qing dynasties, some people changed to add sugar to the pig fat mill, replaced the bean powder with soda ash, and then melted lard and spices and pressed them into spheres or blocks to become a new generation of pancreatic detergent. Its chemical composition is similar to that of soap today. Pancreas is mainly used in North China and Northeast China. Until 1950s, there were still some old pancreas shops such as Hexianglou and Hua Han Chong outside Qianmen, among which Hexianglou was opened in Chongzhen of Ming Dynasty. In addition, the ancients washed clothes with Gleditsia sinensis. In the Song Dynasty, a round dough made of Gleditsia sinensis powder appeared in Hangzhou, which was as big as an orange. It is called "Soap Dough" according to the old story of Wulin. When the soap ball is put into water, it bubbles and is purified. /kloc-In the late 20th century, after the introduction of western washing products, people in China still called it "soap". The book Biography of Heroes of Children was also written in Guangxu period at the end of 19, so the "soap" in this article may be made in China or imported.