subject: Badesalz No Waiting [print this page] Author: Burt Mitchell Author: Burt Mitchell
The late 19th century was a period of momentous reforms identified by efforts to educate people in health and cleanliness. Yet, the soap of the time stayed for the most part a unpleasant brown mass contaminated with remains of raw alkali that irritated the skin. It was still handmade, crudely boiled in cauldrons. It reached the public as secret bars that needed to be cut into lengths by the greengrocer and sold by weight.
Some soap lathered liberally but sweated drops of oil that made fingers greasy and in time went rancid. Producers, increasingly sensitive to the demands of the public, began to include additions such as citronella to hide the nauseating odor with a pleasant perfume reminiscent of lemon.
Further enhancements were at hand . Vegetable oil soaps, with their more favorable traits, grew well-liked. Revolutions in transport gave soapmakers less complicated access to rich sources of luxurious ingredients. West Africa was the home of the oil palm, and a brightly colored buttery substance extracted from its fleshy fruit became a active ingredient in soaps and cosmetics. From islands of the Pacific came copra, the dried flesh of the coconut, from which coconut oil is removed. With exotic ingredients drawn from distant places, soap's image started to change for the better.
Manufacturers accepted the natural desire for cleanliness. Clients had to be certain that soap was indispensable. Advertisers were shortly linking products and their results to such things as honey, sunlight, and snow. Others redone famous design giving their advertisementsand soapan image of refinement and culture. By the turn of the century, soap was a product with a world market. It fueled an advertising industry. In 1894, slogans promoting soap even appeared on the back of postage stamps in New Zealand. Soap now had a good name.
