在没卫生纸的古时候，大家是如何解决如厕卫生问题的呢？
从古希腊人用石头和粘土块作为个人卫生用品至今的洗手间，这中间有非常长的进步经历。现代人理所当然地觉得如厕就应该用卫生纸。这肯定是日常不可或缺的东西之一。很多世纪以来，不同文化的人都有自己维持清洗的办法。
Using the bathroom has come a long way from when ancient Greeks used stones and pieces of clay for personal hygiene1. Toilet paper is one of those things that often gets taken for granted in modern times. This is definitely one of those unavoidable things in life, so through many centuries and in many cultures, everyone had their own method of staying clean.
Ancient Romans were a bit more sophisticated than the Greeks when it came to cleansing2: They opted3 for a sponge on the end of a long stick that was shared by everyone in the community. When not in use, that stick stayed in a bucket of heavily salted seawater in the communal4 bathroom. The public facilities were also equipped with a long marble bench with holes carved out forwell, you know what they were carved out forand holes at the front for your sponge-on-a-stick to slide through. Romans didnt have piding walls, either
Around 1391, during the Song Dynasty, a Chinese emperor decreed that large 2-foot-by-3-foot paper sheets must be made for his toilet time. Until then, people in China just used random5 paper products.
In colonial America, things werent much more advanced. After settlers left Great Britain for the colonies, the best things they could find were corncobs. Ouch. It wasnt until later that they realized they could use old newspapers and catalogs. In fact, the reason there was a hole through the corner of the Old Farmers Almanac was so people would be able to hang it on a hook in their outhouses.
Even though Queen Elizabeth Is godson invented one of the first flush toilets in 1596, commercially produced toilet paper didnt begin circulating until 1857.
Quilted Northern, formerly6 Northern Tissue, advertised as late as 1935 that their toilet paper was splinter-free. Since the company is still big in the multi-billion dollar industry today, the marketing7 plan must have been a success: splinter-free tissue was obviously in very high demand. Toilet papers appeal is not universal, however. Many in India use the left-hand-and-bucket-of-water method.
Today we can buy luxury bathroom accessories like portable bidets, toilet stools, and toilet rolls specifically for Millennialsso theres no going back to the brush-on-a-stick days.
