Life before toilet paper was a trying affair
In recent times a number of shocks, floods, hurricanes, blizzards, pandemics, and the like, has led to shortages of one of the modern age’s seemingly most critical commodities, toilet paper. Fear of running out of the material has led to shortages caused by hoarding, as if there were no alternatives to the reassuring presence of extra rolls on hand, as it were, and lots of them. It gives one pause to wonder, what was used before toilet paper first made its reassuring appearance? Of course, stories of Sears catalogs and corn cobs are well known, as are those of newspapers, pages from books, and old rags. But what about before then. Only three centuries ago, paper was both expensive and scarce, books were relatively rare. There were several methods of attending to a still unpleasant task of basic hygiene, most of them somewhat unpleasant to contemplate.
The Ancient Romans supplied public toilets with buckets of salt water and sponges. Since the toilets were public, the sponges were as well, and wringing out a used sponge in used salt water seems, shall we say, repulsive? Yet it had to be done. An alternative used by the Romans, as well as the Greeks, was a piece of ceramic, kept by the person, cleansed in salt water or vinegar, and often inscribed with the name of a person held in low regard by the owner of the ceramic. They were known as pessoi. Somehow, the idea of carrying around a device for the cleansing of one’s rear, using it, and then continuing to carry it, like a compact or a watch, does not appeal. Plus, it certainly did not offer the comfort lauded by modern manufacturers of toilet paper in praise of their products.