What Your History Books Didn't Tell You About Lice

Comments · 670

• UL

  @ultimateSpagety1789 · 2 years ago

  Normally I'd distrust someone who tells me essential oils are a cure to anything, especially in place of prescribed medicine, but when the problem is bugs and these oils are coming from plants that have spent millions of years evolving ways to not be eaten by bugs, that actually makes sense.

  868

• OO

  @oomflem · 2 years ago (edited)

  Going a bit further back, but nothing drives me more insane as a historian than the myth that medieval people just emptied chamber pots onto each other's heads. DO YOU KNOW HOW EXPENSIVE CLOTHING USED TO BE? A basic set of clothes could be as expensive as a fancy car in modern terms and represent more than a year's labor. And laundry took days. Do you really think people were ok with their neighbours dumping shit all over their most expensive possessions/the majority of their personal wealth?

  1.1K

• GA

  @gadgetgirl02 · 2 years ago

  &quot;A slattern is a woman who doesn&apos;t keep things in their places&quot;<br><br>(Glances around my apartment with growing unease)

  731

• AU

  @AurelUrban · 2 years ago

  Busting historical myths that demean people from the past is one of my fabourite genre lf content

  285

• CO

  @Cochinoiserina · 2 years ago

  I understand that while this video primarily focuses on European and American hygiene as it relates to lice and other ailments, I want to remind everyone that various people have different ways of dealing with hygiene. For instance, many Sub-Saharan Africans don protective hairstyles or wrapped their hair in clean cloth while Asians in the East would&apos;ve worn their hair up too and use rice water, which is really good for hair care. <br><br>No matter where you are in the world, people have always cared about staying clean and washing themselves frequently. Especially the closer you are to the equator, the more you cleaned yourself (which is still true today). Lice is everyone&apos;s enemies!

  599

• LE

  @legslegsankles · 2 years ago

  I wish we as a society wore linen undergarments under our bras. Bras are so expensive and hard to clean and it would make so much more sense to not let all of our chest and underarm sweat seep into it and instead have a layer between.

  471

• RA

  @RabidChild82 · 2 years ago

  It took me two years to completely get rid of bed bugs. I got them from an order from eBay. I think I have some sort of minor PTSD from the experience.

  332

• MR

  @Mrs_Homemaker · 2 years ago

  Re: lice and lard. A common &quot;grandma remedy&quot; for lice is to slather all the hair and scalp in mayonnaise and wrap in plastic wrap and let it sit for a couple hours. Because it smothers the lice and loosens the nits! Then just wash and nit pick. Lard would totally have the same effect.

  172

• AL

  @alejandramoreno6625 · 2 years ago

  Essential oils are the plant&apos;s defenses against insects, that&apos;s why they work. Turpentine comes from conifers, and the most potent poison comes from a plant, the same plant castor oil comes from. This is to say, &quot;natural&quot; doesn&apos;t mean harmless.

  298

• JE

  @jessicahart1159 · 2 years ago

  One thing that I think we forget to think about with the whole &quot;oh people didn&apos;t bathe bc they thought it would make them more sick&quot; thing is just how many WATERBORNE illnesses there are. Some are even resistant to our modern water treatments (see Milwaukee Cryptosporidium outbreak of &apos;93) so... Yeah... I dont blame people for not wanting to go to bathhouses bc we still havent worked that shit out for public pools. 😬😅

  169

• CA

  @catherinezenovich5483 · 2 years ago

  Is anyone else&apos;s head itching every time Abby says lice! &nbsp;When my son had persistent head lice 20 years ago, nothing seemed to work. &nbsp;I talked to the public health nurse and she said to get some cheap conditioner and then smother his head and comb it with a lice comb. &nbsp;I did this every few days for about 10 days and it worked brilliantly. &nbsp;Yes, I was like a chimpanzee de-licing my child but it was so much more effective than the fancy treatments I had previously used. &nbsp;She said the conditioner would smother and stun the lice and it did.

  176

• RY

  @RychaardRyder · 2 years ago

  I change my sheets weekly and my parents have always viewed me as incredibly strange as they change theirs every month or so, hell nah I&apos;m sweaty, AND 18th century people prove me right apparently! clean bed linens gang unite!

  129