Illustration of soap with suds on it
Floortje/Getty Images (soap); iStockPhoto/Getty Images (background); Lightspring/Shutterstock.com (background); Aggie 11/Shutterstock.com (letters)
Paired Texts,

The Dirty History of Soap

Life wasn’t always as clean as it is today.

By Allison Friedman
From the October 2020 Issue

Learning Objective: to read two articles about the history of soap and hygiene and to draw key details from both to write a narrative

Complexity Factors
  • Purpose
    Two nonfiction articles explore how our attitudes towards hygiene have changed. A nonfiction text explores the history of soap and a news story explains how a boy donated hand sanitizer to his community.
  • Structure
    Both articles combine narrative and informational passages.
  • Language Conventionality and Clarity
    Vocabulary: some higher-level words, such as concoction, means, and minuscule. Figurative language: simile
  • Knowledge Demands
    The first article refers to the Civil War. Both articles refer to Covid-19.
Lexile: 910L
Featured Skill: Narrative Writing,
Other Key Skills: author’s craft, key ideas, cause and effect, inference, drawing conclusions, synthesis
Common Core Standards
  • Anchor Standards
    R.1, R.2, R.3, R.4, R.5, R.9, R.10, W.3, SL.1, SL.2, L.4, L.5, L.6
  • Grade 6
    RI.6.1, RI.6.2, RI.6.4, RI.6.9, RI.6.10, W.6.3, SL.6.1, SL.6.2 L.6.4, L.6.6
  • Grade 7
    RI.6.1, RI.6.2, RI.6.4, RI.6.9, RI.6.10, W.6.3, SL.6.1, SL.6.2 L.6.4, L.6.6
  • Grade 8
    RI.8.1, RI.8.2, RI.8.4, W.8.3, SL.8.1, SL.8.2, L.8.4, L.8.6
TEKS Standards
  • Grades 6, 7, 8
    1c, 1d, 2a, 2b, 3a, 4a, 5a, 5b, 5c, 5d, 5e, 5f, 5g, 5h, 5i, 6a, 6b, 6c, 6d, 6e, 6f, 6g, 6h, 6i, 6j (grade 8 only), 8d, 8f, 9a, 9b, 9c, 9d, 9e, 9f, 10a, 10b, 10c, 10d, 10e, 11a, 11b, 11c, 11d, 12d, 12e, 12f, 12g, 12i, 12j

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AS YOU READ

As you read the article and study the images, think about how ideas about hygiene have changed over time.

The Dirty History of Soap

Life wasn’t always as clean as it is today.

Allison Friedman

Fifteen-year-old Abigail Foote stirred a giant pot of stinky, bubbling brown goo. It was 1775 in Colchester, Connecticut. For months, Abigail’s family had saved globs of fat from their meat, storing it in big barrels. They had also collected ashes from the fireplace.

Now, Abigail boiled the fat and ashes together over a fire outside. Thick smoke stung her eyes. Sweat trickled down her neck. Eight hours later, Abigail’s creation was finished at last. After it cooled, she reached into the pot and scooped out a lump of wobbly brown jelly.

This concoction wasn’t stew, or medicine, or a magic potion.

It was soap.

Greasy, Itchy, and Stinky

Sergey Ksen/Shutterstock.com

You’re probably thinking: A mixture of fat and ashes? That doesn’t sound clean at all. (In fact, it probably sounds pretty gross.) But when the two ingredients are boiled together, they create a slippery material that can help pick up dirt and wash it away. Humans began making soap this way nearly 5,000 years ago.

This early soap was greasy and lumpy. It made skin itch and often smelled like burned bacon. Not surprisingly, most ancient people didn’t bathe with it. They used it for pretty much everything except washing their bodies: scrubbing floors, doing laundry, cleaning tools, treating wounds, even styling hair.

So how did people keep clean in ancient times if they didn’t use soap? Bathers in ancient Japan soaked in rice water. Many Native Americans made cleansers out of crushed-up plants. The Greeks and Romans coated their sweaty bodies with oil and sand, then scraped everything off with a curved metal tool. (Famous athletes would sometimes put this goopy mixture in jars and sell it to their fans.)

Smelly = Safe

In Europe, washing with soap became more common around the 1100s, during the time of the knights. Soap makers had figured out how to create gentle, sweet-smelling bars of soap using olive oil instead of animal fats. But these new soaps were very expensive—a luxury that most people could not afford. The wealthy women who could pay for them dabbed the fragrant soaps on their faces and hands, more to make themselves smell nice than to get clean.

Sweet-smelling soap was still beyond most people’s means when Abigail Foote was cooking up her pot of soap in Connecticut in 1775. Abigail and her family would have used the harsh homemade soap to clean around the house. But when it came to washing their bodies, they probably just wiped down with a damp rag . . . if they washed at all.

Back then, many considered bathing unhealthy— even dangerous. They believed that dirt helped block diseases from entering the body. Scrubbing clean, they thought, could make you sick. Smelling like an armpit was a way to stay safe.

Invisible Enemies

Clipart.com

It wasn’t until nearly 100 years later, in the 1860s, that the United States started to get less grimy. By then, bath soap had become much cheaper. A French scientist had developed a way to make it more easily, using salt instead of ashes. Still, it wasn’t very popular.

Then came the Civil War—a long, brutal struggle between the Northern and Southern parts of the U.S. Soldiers fought in muddy ditches and slept in filthy, garbage-filled camps. They were more than twice as likely to die of disease as in battle. These soldiers learned that bathing regularly with soap and water could help them stay healthy. When the war ended, they took this lesson home to their families. People began to understand that keeping clean didn’t make you sick—that in fact, the opposite was true.

Scientists discovered that diseases were caused by microorganisms called germs. Although germs were too minuscule to see, they were everywhere—on streets, in homes, even crawling all over people’s bodies. And while most germs were completely harmless, some could be dangerous. Because there weren’t yet any medicines to fight these invisible enemies, the only defense people had against them was soap. In the same way that it lifted off dirt, soap lifted off germs and allowed them to be rinsed away.

Soap Takeover

Soon soap had taken over America. Factories churned out bars in big stacks. Movie stars appeared in ads for different brands. Kids learned in school about the importance of regular washing. By the 1930s, a survey showed that Americans saw soap as one of the top three things they couldn’t live without (along with bread and butter).

Today we spend more than $300 million on soap products every year. If Abigail Foote were still alive, she would be dazzled by the myriad kinds for sale—solids, liquids, gels, foams. Most are now made with chemicals instead of fat and ashes, but they work essentially the same way as those long-ago cleansers.

And they are just as important for battling germs. Health experts say that hand washing is key to stopping the spread of diseases, including Covid-19. As we face this new health challenge, one of our best weapons comes from ancient times: a little soap and water.

Lending a Clean Hand   

By donating hand sanitizer, one kid spread a little kindness.

Courtesy of family

Jayden Perez with cartons of hand sanitizer

Last February, the coronavirus began spreading across the U.S. Health experts stressed that keeping your hands clean was key to staying healthy. And soon, one item became almost impossible to find: hand sanitizer.

Small bottles that usually cost $2 each were being sold online for nearly $100. Hospitals had to lock up their sanitizer so no one would steal it.

Once you might have tossed a bottle of Purell in your backpack without a second thought. Now it was being treated like liquid diamonds. 

In New Jersey, 11-year-old Jayden Perez saw that many kids in his class didn’t have hand sanitizer. With his mom’s help, he managed to find 1,500 sanitizer sprays for sale online. Jayden donated the sprays—to emergency workers, his neighbors, the library, and every school in his district.

“I just wanted to do what I could to help my community,” Jayden says.

Clean and Convenient

Although soap is thousands of years old, hand sanitizer is a relatively recent invention. In 1988, a soap company in Ohio created a no-rinse hand cleaner called Purell. At first, it was sold mainly to doctors and nurses as a way to disinfect their hands when they weren’t near a sink.

But over time, people across America came to love the convenience of Purell. You could clean up wherever you were—in the car, on the soccer this field, at the beach.

Hand sanitizer breaks down the germs on your hands so they can’t make you sick. Unlike soap and water, however, it doesn’t remove germs from your skin. For this reason, experts say washing with soap is more effective at preventing diseases like Covid-19. But if you’re on the go and can’t wash with soap and water, using sanitizer is a good alternative.

For Jayden, donating hand sanitizer was about more than just keeping his community clean. It was a way to spread a bit of kindness during a difficult time. On each bottle, he pasted a special message: “From the bottom of my heart.”

“It’s times like this that we have to come together,” Jayden says.

This article was originally published in the October 2020 issue.

Writing Prompt

Write a narrative in which Abigail Foore travels through time to present day and visits the soap aisle at a drugstore. How does she react to the way soap has changed since her time? Feel free to include any additional characters or plot elements that you like. Draw on the two articles for information about how soap and hygiene have changed since the 1770s. 

This article was originally published in the October 2020 issue.

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Activities (7)
Core Skills Workout
  • The Core Skills Workout is a series of skill-based activities that will help your students "bulk up" in the comprehension skills they need most to become strong, analytical readers. The Core Skills Workout comes with every issue and will support your reading program no matter what your scope and sequence.
Reference
Skills Activities
Writing Support
Quizzes (1)
Answer Key (1)
Audio ()
Activities (7)
Core Skills Workout
  • The Core Skills Workout is a series of skill-based activities that will help your students "bulk up" in the comprehension skills they need most to become strong, analytical readers. The Core Skills Workout comes with every issue and will support your reading program no matter what your scope and sequence.
Reference
Skills Activities
Writing Support
Quizzes (1)
Answer Key (1)
Step-by-Step Lesson Plan

Close Reading, Critical Thinking, Skill Building

Download the Lesson Plan

Essential questions: How can scientific breakthroughs drive change? How has soap changed our lives? How does scientific understanding affect our lives?

🎉 New: Slide Deck Lesson Plans

Find a student-facing, interactive version of our lesson plan in your Resources tab. It's available to share in both Google Slides and Microsoft PowerPoint!

1. PREPARING TO READ (10 minutes)

Do-Now: Respond to a Question (5 minutes)

  • Post this question in your classroom or virtual hangout: How would your life be different if soap didn’t exist? 
  • Give students a few minutes to answer. Then invite students to share and discuss their responses.

Preview vocabulary ( 5 minutes)

Share Vocabulary: Words and Definitions (available in your Resources tab) and review the words as a class. (Optionally, have students complete the practice activity for homework.) Highlighted words: concoction, means, miniscule, myriad

2. READING AND DISCUSSING (45 minutes)

“The Dirty History of Soap”

  • Have a volunteer read the As You Read box on page 12 in the magazine or at the top of the digital story page. 
  • Read the story once through as a class. Optionally, have students listen to author Allison Friedman read the story while they follow along. (The audio read-aloud is located in the Resources tab in Teacher View and at the top of the story page in Student View.) 
  • Divide students into groups to read the story again and respond to the following close-reading questions. Tip: If you’re remote, you can have each group respond in a shared Google Doc or discuss the questions in their own chat room.

 

Close-Reading Questions (10 minutes)

  • Reread the first section of the article. How does the author draw the reader into the article? (author’s craft) The author begins the article by vividly describing Abigail Foote stirring a gross concoction. The author describes the mixture as “stinky, bubbling brown goo” and explains that it is made up of globs of animal fat and ash. This description captures readers’ interest and makes them want to keep reading to find out what Abigail is making. Then the author creates even more interest by revealing the shocking fact that the brown goo is soap.
  • Why did few people bathe in Abigail Foote’s time? (key ideas) One reason that people did not bathe in Abigail Foote’s time was because gentle, good-smelling soap was an expensive luxury that most people could not afford. Another reason people did not bathe often was because many believed that dirt on the skin protected them from disease.
  • What happened in the 1800s that helped to improve hygiene habits in America? (key ideas, cause and effect) Several things happened in the 1800s that helped improve hygiene habits in America. First, a French scientist figured out a way to produce good-smelling soap more easily, so bath soap became cheaper. Then, during the Civil War, more soldiers died of diseases than died in battle. The soldiers realized that washing themselves could help them stay healthy, and they brought this idea home with them. Around the same time, scientists discovered that tiny, invisible germs cause illness and that washing can get rid of germs and keep people healthy. Once people learned this, they began washing more.
  • How does what we know about soap and washing affect our lives today? (inference, drawing conclusions) Today we know that washing with soap is an important step in protecting ourselves from getting sick. Specifically, we know that washing our hands is key to helping slow the spread of Covid-19.

"Lending a Clean Hand"

  • Read the article as a class. Optionally, have students listen to author Allison Friedman read the article while they follow along. (The audio read-aloud is located in the Resources tab in Teacher View and at the top of the story page in Student View.)
  • Discuss the following close-reading and critical-thinking questions, some of which draw on both articles.

Close-Reading Question (5 minutes)

  • Since soap was invented about 5,000 years ago, how has the way people keep clean changed? Use information from both articles in your answer. (synthesis, key ideas) Even though soap was invented about 5,000 years ago, people didn’t often use it on their bodies because it was harsh and smelly. Instead, they cleaned themselves with things like rice water, crushed-up plants, or oil and sand. But many people in America didn’t wash at all because they believed doing so was unhealthy. By the 1860s, people realized that washing with soap and water could carry away germs and keep them from getting sick. Today, we frequently wash with soap and water to stay clean and healthy or use hand sanitizer when soap and water aren’t available.

Critical-Thinking Questions (5 minutes)

  • In what ways, if any, do you think differently about soap after reading these articles? Answers will vary.
  • How did Jayden Perez’s donation of hand sanitizer support people in his community, aside from helping them sanitize their hands? What can we learn from his actions? Jayden showed people in his community that he cared about them. His act of kindness and generosity showed members of his community that they were not alone in facing Covid-19 and that they could get through it together. Jayden’s actions also showed that sometimes it takes only one person and one act of kindness to make a big difference. In addition, Jayden set an example for his community of someone stepping up in a crisis to help others get through it.

3. SKILL BUILDING AND WRITING (20 minutes)

  • Have students complete Preparing to Write: Planning Your Story (available in your Resources tab). This activity will help them organize their ideas in preparation for the writing prompt on page 15 in the printed magazine and at the bottom of the digital story article. 
  • Alternatively, have students choose a culminating task from the Choice Board, which includes a range of ideas and difficulty levels.

Recommended pairings from the Scope archives:

Paired Texts: “The Great Stink ” (April 2020)

Paired Texts: “The History of Teeth” (October 2017)

Text-to-Speech