Getting to the Bottom of Us
Dear Readers, I was having a really hard time thinking of something for this week’s blog. You are aware of my liking for lists – 10 ten, most popular, etc. Googling some lists the past few days, something caught my eye: most often items for which people shop.
Well, lo and behold, I had not thought much about it, but toilet paper was high on every list. Everybody needs it. It is also one of the needed staples collected by Red Cross and FEMA and other aid agencies for victims of catastrophes. So…
Although paper was used as padding and wrapping in China as early as the 2nd century B.C., it was not used for human cleaning until the 6th century A.D. The evidence was found in 589 A.D. when a scholar wrote that “no paper on which there are quotations or commentaries from the sages” could be used for personal cleansing. Jumping way ahead in Chinese history, during the Ming Dynasty (1300 -1600s), sheets of paper (two feet by three feet) for the royal court. Meanwhile, the Japanese were using chugi sticks pictured here. During these early days, other cleaning sheets for the wealthy were lace, wool, and hemp, while the poor used their hands and afterward washed them in the river. Some Middle Eastern cultures still use this method of hand and water.
Native Americans used wood shavings, leaves, hay, moss, ferns, and seashells.
The Romans used a sea sponge on a stick from a bucket of salt water and vinegar placed in the public latrines. Use the stick, insert in a bucket, and pass it to the next person. (Oh, those glorious days of Rome!)
Meanwhile, the Greeks were using small pottery shards (three/person) with a scraping motion. Warriors often etched their enemy’s names on the shard before using. (Beware of Greeks….)
As the agrarian society developed, plants husks and corn cobs were the most popular items sometimes used indoors but mostly outdoors. My friend Walt, a world-traveled hunter, described something similar even today.
As the agrarian society developed, plants husks and corn cobs were the most popular items sometimes used indoors but mostly outdoors. My friend Walt, a world-traveled hunter, described something similar even today.
If there is no outdoor toilet, find a good tree and then use biodegradable special toilet tissue made for this outdoor use. Maybe I should give Walt a Farmer’s Almanac for Christmas.
Apparently, the Almanac used to have a small hole in the upper left corner so it could be hung on the outhouse wall.
On to modern toilet tissue which also has an interesting and truly rough evolution. Toilet paper, as we know it today, first hit the market in America in the 1880s. Several brands and designs were offered which varied in size, roughness, weight, and water absorption.
John Gayetty introduced his brand in 1857 – flat sheets - which he advertised as “the greatest necessity of the age.” 
The first brands in rolls were one ply thick and often contained splinters due to crude production techniques. It was a man named Sam Wheeler from Albany who obtained the first patent for toilet paper and dispenser in 1883. The Northern Tissue Company used in their ads: “splinter free.”
Looking again at my many lists – Charmin Ultra Soft is the number one selling tissue in the United States. Here is a quick Charmin evolution.
And remember this man? And my final factoid is that more than seven billion rolls are sold yearly in the U.S. alone with an average of just under24 rolls/person/year. Wonder if I could figure out how many trees that would take?
Finally, we need to once and for all time resolve the “over or under” question of how to hang the roll on the dispenser. The patent shows the paper OVER (Wheeler 1891). And you know we need least one cartoon for an industry that generates $6 billion per year!
Hope I have gotten to the bottom of a few historical facts.
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