Mumsnet Talk

MrsBovary Its a good one isn't it? Haven't met anyone else who has read it before. I read it for the first time when I was pregnant which was a huge mistake!

Goodness me!

I have a copy of History of Women's Bodies too, R2. It's an interesting read.

I can well believe that about incest, apparently it (and inbreeding) is still relatively common in very closed communities where branches of the same family live in consistently close proximity across several generations and where education (esp sex/health education) is either poor or non-existent.

I outraged one person on a thread a long time ago, when I quoted a TV historian (maybe Starkey?) who suggested incest was what people got up to when the sun went down - can't remember the exact phraseology but it was pithy, which made me think Starkey. Grim idea of course. It also reminds me of the Jorvik museum and the two 'going for it' just inside a doorway - is it still there?

I've just remembered something.
Despite all this stuff about them not snogging, the normal Tudor kiss of greeting was on the lips. (No tongues or anything, but still.)

Has anyone mentione Napoleon? Apparanatly he sent a message to Josephine saying 'Back in X days, do not wash!'

Well, and what about families living in one room? That wasn't terribly uncommon in the last century in the UK, was it?

That is hilarious about the Iron Age recreation ... some sounds you would not want to hear!

Maybe if you were rich you would have oral sex once a year, after your annual bath

The privacy factor is something that intrigues me even more in relation to sex than dirt does. I can't imagine living without privacy just in general; what on earth your sexual relationships would be like without it, I can't imagine.

When they did that Iron Age village recreation on tv in the 70s the participants talked about how there was visual privacy but not aural privacy - you could hear the other couples at it in the dark in your roundhouse!

It's not just a ripe odour though, is it. I quite like a man who smells of himself IYKWIM without any cologne and I don't mind a bit of sweat. But for many people across much of history they would have been downright filthy: hard manual labour, impoverished liviing conditions inc. living with animals, grubbiness from open fires, untreated illness and infection, and so on. I just can't imagine something like oral sex (for example) being anything people would have enjoyed until relatively recent times. Exceptions being societies that did make a big deal of washing eg the Romans as mentioned earlier.

Yuk. I bet those beds were heaving...with bed bugs and body lice

But going back to the smell thing...why are we expecting people from Olden Times to have had precisely the same attitudes towards hygiene and desire as we did? They might have found a rather, erm, "riper" odour to be erotic - crammed with hormones, after all- and, if transported to the modern day, may have found the lot of us pretty unsexy because we don't smell enough! Don't forget Napoleon's message to Josephine- "Ne laver pas, je reviens"- "Don't wash, I'm coming back"? (Apologies for any mistakes in the French...)

They used to share beds with complete strangers, NAKED, except for a nightcap.

In the C11th/C12th midwives used to pack women after childbirth with all kinds of things to stem bleeding, including moss. I have read in one book but haven't read it elsewhere that women who died in childbirth were buried on unhallowed ground outside the churchyard.

And men who travelled and put up in hostelries commonly used to share beds. Marlowe is supposed to have said, "all they that love not tobacco and boys are fools"

at doctrine.

No - but - it's fascinating. It could be seen as the body having a self-cleaning function. Or self-abluting.

Oh my, that's quite the grossest thing I've heard about in a long time since the last time I googled anything mentioned on MN

Christ, it actually had soot in it?!

Learning more than I ever wanted to know on this thread

I think we can say History Club is a roaring success as a new Topic - it has a Friday night thread on a Tuesday!

www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=sootikin

A sootikin. Think I learned that on here!

Sootikins

http://www.sootikin.com/sootikin.htm

I'm off to purge my browser history and take a long hot shower now.......

SummerRain

Shit.... I should have know better than to google <<<needs shower>>>

I did come across this though..... www.cracked.com/article_17399_8-terrifying-instruments-old-time-doctors-used-your-junk.html They might not have liked sex much but they sure liked shoving things up their arses

I think Stephen Fry would murmur, "A viscous concoction of menstrual blood, ejaculate and a dash of ladies' enthusiam".

<<ponders Stephen Fry saying the words "fanjo juice">>

OMG how on earth did they describe that on QI?!