Distinctly Montana Magazine

D I S T I N C T L Y M O N T A N A M A G A Z I N E • S P R I N G 2 0 2 1 48 BAD HAIR DAYS Washing one's hair was low priority, given how much hard work it was to get clean water. People favored regular brushing over washing. The old rule of brushing the hair for one hundred strokes before bedtime is attributed to the Victorian era. When hair did get washed, it was usually not with water, but with whiskey, castor oil, or vinegar—possibly egg yolks if you were well-heeled and could afford to waste good food on your appearance. In his autobiographical travelogue Roughing It pub- lished in 1872, Mark Twain describes the vile and possibly counterproductive personal hygiene services offered at a stagecoach station in some desolate corner of the Far West. Twain notes the tin washbasin, pail of water, and yellow bar soap sitting on the hard-packed ground. Water, soap, and basin were all communal, shared between the station-keep- er, half a dozen stablemen, and every traveler who passed through and cared to partake. Twain describes with disgusted amusement another communal implement attached to the mirror: "From the glass frame hung the half of a comb by a string [...] it had come down from Esau and Samson, and had been accu- mulating hair ever since—along with certain impurities." The precise nature of these impurities Twain leaves to the reader's imagination, but one might guess some were likely crawling around the comb teeth on their own. So much for staying clean on the road. Both men and women sported long locks as a general rule up until the Civil War, when shorter styles for men came into vogue. While hairstyles came and went, facial hair remained the norm for men throughout the 19th century. From mutton chops to the Van Dyke, men had no shortage of options. What's more, a full beard was recommended by Victori- an-era doctors as a way to stave off disease, the logic being that it acted as a sort of air filter. Never mind that beards obviously house more bacteria and bits of food than they keep out. What's more, saloon patrons would use a shared towel to wipe their beards off after imbibing, compounding the problem. But given the Victorian preoccupation with air purity, the filter theory makes some kind of sense. The problem was that people were concerned with air quality for all the wrong reasons. MIASMAS, THUNDERMUGS, AND THE SPREAD OF DISEASE 19th century folks had a vague understanding that unclean water and impure air made for an unhealthy living environment. They were on the right track, but had not wholly arrived. Clearing the streets of garbage, excrement, and dead animals had the effect of eliminating the real sources of infection, but an understanding of bacteria and viruses was next to nonexistent. Although Louis Pasteur's germ theory was slowly gaining traction in the medical community, many doctors out West still believed that mias- mas were the cause of infections. The miasma theory held that diseases like cholera, smallpox, and dysentery were transmitted not from person to person, but through the air by foul-smelling vapors. To the good folks on the frontier, the link between disease and hygiene remained a mystery for a long time. When outhouse pits would fill to capacity, the hole would be covered with a layer of dirt, a fresh pit dug a few feet off, and the entire outhouse picked up and dropped over the new hole. Chamber pots, or "thundermugs" as they were affectionately called, were emptied out the window every morning. Flies would come inside and land on the dinner table; that they were vectors of disease was not immediate- ly apparent. It was only when people started adding lime to outhouse pits and noticed the white trails that flies left behind on their food that the connection became clear. Conditions were dire in saloons as well. In an effort to keep things clean, sawdust was spread on the floor to soak up poorly aimed wads of tobacco. Newcomers to town could rent a space to sleep on the saloon floor for twenty-five cents a night. Sleeping on a bed of tobac- co-drenched sawdust all but guaranteed these poor souls a case of pneumonia or tuberculosis. WASHING ONE'S HAIR was a low priority, GIVEN HOW MUCH HARD WORK IT WAS to get clean water.

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