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Short history of soap

By John A. Hunt, PhD, FRPharmS Few items of commerce are more ubiquitous or in more frequent use than soap. Few proprietary products have been offered over a longer period to the public by pharmacists, and by chemists and druggists before them, than some long established brands of toilet soap. Soap is perhaps the first manufactured substance with which we come into contact in our lives and it remains a daily necessity thereafter. For how long has this inexpensive but essential product been such a feature of daily life and how did its adoption come about?

There is no clear evidence that the use of soap for personal hygiene pre-dates the Christian era. Two mentions appear in the Old Testament. "For though thou wash thee with nitre, and take thee much soap, yet thine iniquity is marked before me," says the book of Jeremiah. A more modern translation reads: "Though you wash with soda and use soap lavishly. . . ."1 There are doubts as to whether this is a reference to true soap. It has been suggested that possibly a lye, made by mixing alkaline plant ash with water, was referred to, or possibly some form of Fuller's earth.2 This view is perhaps supported by the second mention, on virtually the final page of the Old Testament, in the book of Malachi, in which both the authorised version of 1611 and the modern translation read virtually identically: "He is like a refiner's fire, like a fuller's soap."3 It has been suggested that some form of soap, made by boiling fat with ashes, was being made in Babylon as early as 2800BC, but probably used only for washing garments. Pliny the Elder (7BC–53AD) mentions that soap was being produced from tallow and beech ashes by the Phoenicians in 600BC.4 This might have been used as a hair pomade rather than a washing soap.5

Bathing in classical times In classical times, perfumed oils were in extensive use for bathing and were combined with the use of the strigil, a metal implement used to scrape the skin free of oil and dirt. It is claimed that, for washing themselves, the Romans used a type of clay found near Rome called "sapo" from which the word soap is derived.4 An alternative suggestion for the derivation of the name is that the Romans learned the art of soap-making, using animal fats and plant ashes, from the Celts, who called it "saipo".6 The use of soap in personal hygiene does not appear to have been adopted until the second century when the physician Galen (130–200AD) mentions its use for washing the body. Another physician, Priscianus (circa 385AD), reported the use of soap as a shampoo and made the first mention of the trade of "saponarius", or soap-boiler.6 While soap was in use during the Roman period its adoption may have been slow, despite the popularity of public and private baths throughout the empire. Possibly early soaps, made from animal fat and crude alkali, were not particularly attractive in appearance or smell, and were deemed more suitable for cleaning and laundering. The remains of what might have been a soap factory were discovered in Pompeii, which was overwhelmed by an eruption of Vesuvius in 79AD, but possibly this was a site for producing a type of Fuller's earth for cleaning fabrics.