Did Medieval Women Use Dry Shampoo? The Tortula & My Ironic Pandemic Hair Care
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- Опубликовано: 5 окт 2024
- Welcome back to my follow up project about keeping your hair clean in the middle ages. My research for this project was based in trying to dig deeper into medieval hair care. I was pointed to a book called The Trotula: An English Translation of the Medieval Compendium of Women's Medicine, translated by Monica H Green through a Society for Creative Anachronism web conference and set off to reading. This is a popular medieval treatise on for women's health, and includes a range of medical advice from cosmetics to assistance with child birth. Obviously I can't promise that all of this information dating back the the 11th or 12th century is still thought to be sound, but it is fascinating.
While reading through the section on women's cosmetics I found some hair care recipes and had to pause. Were they asking me to put powder in my hair to make it smell good? This sounded suspiciously like a home made dry shampoo I had used on and off at camping events and during the pandemic so I had to try!
The recipe called for dried rose petals, clove, nutmeg, watercress, galangal and rose water. The supplies I did not already have I ordered from the Etsy shop below. They had great reviews and shipped pretty quick:
www.etsy.com/s...
I ground/ crushed/ grated each of the ingredients and used 1/4 oz of each dry ingredient. Once the items were powered and mixed I sprinkled with rose water and let the mixture dry. Another method of doing this is coming your hair with the rose water and then applying powder, but I did not find this nearly as helpful.
The results I had from this process were pretty amazing to me. I included this in a round of the hair combing on an as needed basis and my hair smelled great and was not oily at all. The finished powder smells a bit like holiday cakes with flowers. The powder and natural hair oils also blend slightly to give my fairly flat hair some volume.
My project was picked as a top science entry for our Queen's Prize arts and sciences tournament in the Outlands in the Spring of 2021 in the category "Try Something New." Below is a link to the other entrants so you can see more of their amazing work!
moas.outlands....
If you are interested in 18th century hair care I would recommend l taking a look at The American Duchess Guide to 18th Century Beauty. This book will walk you through later historical uses of hair powder.
The 18th century hair power I'm holding in the video is from LLBC Apothecary:
www.etsy.com/s...
Have you tried any of The Trotula recipes, or some from another medieval manuscript? I would love to hear about them in the comments below.
affiliate link for double sided comb amzn.to/3G2oa6w
Thank you for Watching!
Bisou Bisou
Maridith
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Hmm, I am at the point where I wash my hair once a week, maybe twice a week over summer, but often the reason is just due to oil. I might investigate some more medieval options and maybe do away with washing it altogether! Thanks for the info.
My modern aesthetic put my max at 2 weeks with these methods, but even then my hair wasn't gross.
Good luck with your experimenting!
@@MaridithSmith thanks for that info, always good to know!
You're welcome!
❤❤
I'm so glad you enjoyed the video
I'm going to give this recipe a go. I've been using dry shampoo and doing a more historically inspired haircare routine for a couple of years now. Did you feel like this worked as well or better than an 18th century hair powder? Did it match your hair color better? I'm 1/2 Sicilian so my hair gets greasy and while I love using 18th century powder, it doesn't really appeal to modern aesthetics and since it tends to make my hair look powdery. I can't really get away without using powder though because my hair just gets too greasy looking for modern standards. even if I use a linen wrap when I get home from work. I can maybe stretch 2 weeks, but I would love to not have to use modern shampoos! And thank you again for another great video❣
It might be something you need to try out on your own hair type to see how you like it. I decided I prefer to use this camping when I shower less frequently. I have not worn this regularly in my modern life so it can be hard to speak to those details. I did like it in historical clothing contexts!
Would the arrowroot dry shampoo and this new hair perfume work together as it's own mix?
I haven't tried it as a mix, but it is quite possible. Arrowroot is commonly used in modern dry Shampoo recipes instead of some of the herbs in this one. I would live to hear about your experiments mixing arrowroot and the aromatic spices.
You should research fast hair growth fortified shampoo.
I did look into this, but had better success bringing up extra concerns with my doctor and running hormone tests rather than doing specialized shampoos. Making sure that I was eating a healthier diet has also helped my hair tremendously.