The art of manufacturing soap has been, in a measure, known and followed for many ages, proving a source of industry and advantage to various nations and individuals. It may therefore interest some of our readers if we attempt to trace its origin and progress as indicated by the writings of the earlier authors.
Pliny, for instance, the Roman historian, informs us that the art of manufacturing soap is the invention of the Gauls, and that the best article made by them was a combination of goats’ tallow and the ashes of the beech-tree. They also seem to have been acquainted with both hard and soft soaps.
The Romans eventually acquired this knowledge from the Gauls, by whom this branch of industry was, with their conquests, soon spread over Europe. Whoever may have been the originators of soap making, the Romans were undoubtedly familiar with it.
Galen, at least, mentions it in his works, and confirmatory of this statement, we may add that a soap maker’s shop, with its utensils and products, was discovered among the ruins and ashes of Pompeii, which was destroyed by an eruption of Mount Vesuvius in the first century of the Christian era.
Soap was often used by the Romans as a cosmetic, for Pliny tells us that soap, with which the Germans colored their hair red, was imported into Rome for the use of the fashionable ladies and their gallants in that city. This cosmetic was probably tinged with the juice of a plant.
But before we recur further to less remote times, we will endeavor to answer the question, “What substitutes were employed previous to the invention of soap?”
Soap, both hard and soft, as it is well known, is produced by the union of the fats and the alkalis; by hard soap, we mean such as have soda, and by soft soap is understood that which has potassa for its basis. Water alone will not remove oily substances from any surfaces to which they may adhere, but a solution of soap, being always more or less alkaline, though its constituents may be united in their number of equivalents, will, nevertheless, render the oil freely miscible with water, so that it can be easily erased.
A similar effect is produced by using a mixture of water and lixivious salts. The gall of animals and the juice of certain plants, also possess the property of removing dust and dirt, It does not, however, appear that gall was employed by the ancients, but it is certain that in washing they used saponaceous plants.
In the remotest times, it appears that clothes were cleaned by being rubbed or stamped upon in water without the addition of any substance whatever. We are told by Homer, that Nausicaa and her attendants, washed their garments by treading upon them in pits containing water. We find, however, at a later period, that mention is made of ashes and a lye of ashes, but it is so seldom noticed that their primary use cannot be ascertained.
Aristophanes and Plato mention a substance, “konia,” which they say was employed for washing purposes, and Pollax leads us to infer that this ” konia” was a lye of ashes. With this lye, oil and wine jars were cleansed, as well as the images of the gods.
The practice of decarbonizing alkaline lyes by means of lime, was, according to Beckmann, known at any rate in the time of Paulus Aegineta, but we are not led to suppose that the Romans were acquainted with the dry substance obtained by evaporation of the clear liquid.
Various ancient writers inform us, furthermore, that lixivious natural salts were employed for washing, such as the nitrum, designated “borith” in the writings of the Hebrews. In the present day it has commonly been supposed equivalent to nitre, but this is an error, for it has been evidently proved that the ancients understood by the word nitrum, the carbonated alkali either of potassa or soda. Both of these substances are natural products, and found in many places and in large quantities, either in outcrops of different rocks or prairies, or in springs and lakes.
Asia is rich in such lakes; some exist in Asia Minor, Armenia, Persia, Hindostan, Thibet, and other eastern parts of that continent. Egypt, also, is richly supplied with soda lakes and springs, and with mineral sodas, whilst in Naples a volcano rock is still extant containing soda.
As some of these substances are highly impregnated with hygroscopic salts, it is not necessary to suppose, as some do, that the Egyptians produced their mineral alkali from the ashes of plants; on the contrary, Pliny states that they were obliged to put it-in well-corked vessels, otherwise it would become liquid.
The production of alkali from plants seems to have been the invention of a later period. Strabo speaks of an alkaline water in Armenia, which we have reason to believe is similar to that of the lake Ascanius mentioned by Aristotle, Anxigonus Carystrius, and Pliny. And here it is worthy of remark, that the ancients made ointments of those mineral alkalis and oil, but no hard soap.
The cheapest and most common article, however, used for washing was the urine of men and animals. This, not long since, was actually employed in the cloth manufactories at Leeds, Halifax, and other places in England. To obtain a supply of it, the ancients deposited at the corners of the streets, special vessels, which they emptied as soon as filled by the passers-by, who were at liberty, even expected, to use them.
Scourers at Rome, however, were obliged to reside either in the suburbs or in unfrequented streets, on account of the consequent disagreeable odor attending their business. Instead of soap, the ancients at any rate made use of the saponaceous juice of some plant, but of which one it is difficult, we may say impossible, to define.
Pliny speaks, among others, of a plant growing on a rocky soil and on the mountains, with prickly and rough leaves. Fuchs was of the opinion that it must have been the soap-wort, still used in Italy and France. Others imagine that it was the Gypsophila Struthium, of Linne’, a plant with a tender stem and leaves like those of the olive tree; but Beckmann places no confidence in any of these surmises, but rather favors the idea that it was a plant growing in Syria. Beanmeal was also employed for cleansing purposes.
Large quantities of fullers’ earth (silicate of alumina), at the same time were moreover used, and clothes, dressed with this earth, were stamped upon by the feet, a process by which grease is partly absorbed and partly scoured off.
The poor at Rome, moreover, rubbed it over their clothes at festivals, in order that they might appear brighter. Some of these earths were employed in the baths instead of nitrum, and De la Valle, who traveled through the Levant at the beginning of the last century, states that the practice was still in vogue and adopted by persons of the highest distinction; they, in fact, never bathing without it.
It has, furthermore, been authentically established, that in the eighth century there were numerous soap factories in Italy and Spain, but it was not till the close of the twelfth and commencement of the thirteenth century that this branch of business was gradually introduced into France.
The first factories were founded in Marseilles, an old colony of the Phenicians, a race half Grecian, half Egyptian, energetic, intelligent, active, particularly partial to industrial arts and commercial enterprises. This ancient city was, as it were, the cradle of soap manufacturing.
Here all the crude materials for this purpose were abundant. The fecundity of its soil gave rise to the olive tree of the Orient, as well as to the vegetable sodas, whilst its harbor in the Mediterranean peculiarly favored and hastened the prosperity of the soap manufacturers and traders. There has, indeed, been gradually a considerable increase in the demand for soap, attributable mainly to the method of bleaching linen, first adopted in the seventeenth century, at which time this new branch of manufacture was imported from the West Indies, and the important application of the chlorine for bleaching textile fabrics had not been discovered.
Notwithstanding the richness of its soil, and its natural resources, Marseilles, nevertheless, could not furnish the crude materials in quantities sufficient to supply the wants of her soap manufacturers, and consequently, ere long, became tributary to Spain and Italy, to the former for the oils and vegetable sodas; to the latter for the oils only.
From France, the art of manufacturing soap was introduced into England at an unknown epoch prior to the year 1500. Soap, for a long time, was there made partly according to the French method, viz., with sodas obtained from the incineration of seashore plants, and partly after the German plan with potash and salt, which plan is still followed by some old-fashioned soap makers. Almost all kinds of soap were thus manufactured in England, whilst in France the olive oil soap only was produced.
About the first decennium of the present century, however, palm oil and cocoa oil soaps have been made in Paris, where also the art of manufacturing toilet soaps has scarcely been superseded by either English or American manufacturers.
The application of rosin for making soap is of English origin. When the art of soap making was introduced into this country, it is difficult to ascertain, but it is certain that the great impulse which the art received originated in 1804, from the genius of Le Blanc, by whom soda was economically extracted from common salt, and eventually introduced into the English market by Mr. James Muspratt, the owner of extensive chemical works.
This discovery, moreover, one of the most beautiful and important in modern chemistry, inaugurated a new era, as it were, in the art of soap making. Not less important were the investigations of Chevreul in 1811, by whom the proximate constituents of the fats, scarcely known before, were exactly demonstrated.
He, in fact, may justly be regarded as the savant who elevated this industrial branch from a mere trade to a prominent art, which at the present day is characterized by the introduction of new saponifiable substances from all parts of the world, by the application of ordinary and superheated steam, and by various mechanical arrangements for different processes of pressure; quite recently also, use of pressure has been made by which equally mild and detersive soaps are produced at a cheaper rate and less waste of time.