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Fingernails

NC-Retired 🚫

And toenails too!

Before chrome clippers were ubiquitous at every store checkout register, how did people clip their nails?

500 years ago? In Rome 2000 years ago? Egypt 3000 years ago? Mesopotamia 5000 years ago?

A metal knife? A sharp obsidian shard?

Have you ever seen this tiny conundrum mentioned in any literature?

And yes, I know, walk barefoot on rocks and dig in the dirt with your fingers will tend to wear them down.

And yes, I'd be afraid I'd cut my toe off if I used a sharp volcanic glass shard.

Enquiring minds and all that.

Switch Blayde 🚫

@NC-Retired

Before the invention of the modern nail clipper, people would use small knives to trim or pare their nails. Descriptions of nail trimming in literature date as far back as the 8th century BC.

Replies:   Dominions Son
Dominions Son 🚫

@Switch Blayde

Before the invention of the modern nail clipper, people would use small knives to trim or pare their nails.

I've used a pocket knife to trim my finger nails a time or two when I didn't have proper nail clippers or sharp pointed scissors handy.

Descriptions of nail trimming in literature date as far back as the 8th century BC.

I wonder how far back nail files go.

Replies:   Dicrostonyx
Dicrostonyx 🚫

@Dominions Son

I wonder how far back nail files go.

The modern emery board was patented in 1883, but Marie Antoinette is known to have used a lime Γ  ongles, which is pumice stone shaped like a pencil.

More generally, the Egyptians were using sandstone to shape and groom nails at least 3000 BCE. Given that fingernail length can be a hazard, it's very likely some form of grooming pre-dates civilisation.

Replies:   awnlee jawking
awnlee jawking 🚫

@Dicrostonyx

I imagine nail biting was more common too, as the body recognises it as a source of calcium.

AJ

Replies:   Dicrostonyx
Dicrostonyx 🚫

@awnlee jawking

Oh, certainly. Plus, people who make tools by knocking rocks together probably wear down their nails faster than people who sit at a desk.

As an aside, I recall seeing an article years back which suggested that about 1/6th the of people who bite their fingernails regularly also bite their toenails. Not sure what the sample size for that study was, though.

Replies:   awnlee jawking
awnlee jawking 🚫

@Dicrostonyx

people who make tools by knocking rocks together probably wear down their nails faster than people who sit at a desk.

Anecdotally, calcium is a requirement for movement. So people who sit at desks all day should have more available calcium for growing hair and nails.

From my own observations, that may well be true. Population sample size: 1 ;-)

AJ

Dominions Son 🚫

@NC-Retired

Before chrome clippers were ubiquitous at every store checkout register, how did people clip their nails?

My mom has uses scissors.

Replies:   Grant
Grant 🚫

@Dominions Son

Before chrome clippers were ubiquitous at every store checkout register, how did people clip their nails?

My mom has uses scissors.

Yep. For many years i used small, curved nail scissors before coming across the present nail clippers.

Replies:   Dominions Son
Dominions Son 🚫

@Grant

The scissors my mom uses aren't curved and aren't made specifically for trimming nails.

Something like this: https://www.fiskars.com/en-us/crafting-and-sewing/products/scissors-and-shears/razoredge-micro-tip-easy-action-shears-6-190500-1006

NC-Retired 🚫

@NC-Retired

In antiquity, steel was rare and primarily used for weapons, swords and the like.

Y'all are talking about what you or your momma use(d).

I'm asking about before scissors were in common use for anything.

I'd not thought about using sandstone for abrading the nails.

My current toenail clipping process includes a 10 minute soak in the hottest water my feet can tolerate. Then the nails are soft enough that it is not a struggle to snip 'em.

I cannot easily imagine the amount of time necessary to abrade away 2-3mm of nail growth. An hour (or more) for both feet? Wow!

Dominions Son 🚫

@NC-Retired

I cannot easily imagine the amount of time necessary to abrade away 2-3mm of nail growth. An hour (or more) for both feet? Wow!

Source for that estimate?

Replies:   NC-Retired
NC-Retired 🚫

@Dominions Son

Source? Me.

How long it takes to do nail maintenance using modern cutting tools and how many minutes I need to smooth the sharp edges so I do not cut myself with an accidental bump.

And yes, I've cut myself when vigorously washing my hands.

And let's not forget middle of the night foot scrapes as I toss and turn.

Replies:   Dominions Son
Dominions Son 🚫

@NC-Retired

How long it takes to do nail maintenance using modern cutting tools and how many minutes I need to smooth the sharp edges so I do not cut myself with an accidental bump.

Well, then I can put myself up as a counter source.

I have personally done all of my fingernails with just a nail file in under 15 minutes.

I've never tried to do my toenails with a file.

Replies:   NC-Retired
NC-Retired 🚫
Updated:

@Dominions Son

OK.

A nail file is metal, correct? Or do you use sandpaper glued to a flat stick like me?

Without metal tools, knife, scissors or a nail file, how long would it take to use a sandstone block to do all 20 nails?

I have to estimate too, but a significant amount of time every fortnight or so methinks.

Replies:   Dominions Son
Dominions Son 🚫
Updated:

@NC-Retired

A nail file is metal, correct? Or do you use sandpaper glued to a flat stick like me?

I've used both metal nail files and emery boards. It makes no difference in how long it takes.

how long would it take to use a sandstone block to do all 20 nails?

A lot depends on unknowns. What is the size and shape of the sandstone block? The size of a bar of soap? Bigger? Or something smaller and specifically shaped for the job like the pumice stone lime Γ  ongles used by Marie Antoinette.

I have to estimate too, but a significant amount of time every fortnight or so methinks.

If you are only doing it every two weeks, there's your problem.

Replies:   NC-Retired
NC-Retired 🚫

@Dominions Son

Bless your heart.

Until I moved here to NC I'd never encountered the term.

Shortly after arriving I was talking to a fellow that grew up about 20 miles from his current house.

General BS sorta conversation and I asked about the term. He spit a stream of tobacco juice and said, " That's how church going grannies told you were a fuck wit without cursing."

I've adopted the phrase and use it often in mixed company.

A short tale…

Dad moved the family every few years. He was always looking for a better job. At least that's what he claimed. I suspect his employers got tired of his BS and encouraged him to move on.

We moved between my 4th and 5th grades. New school, no friends, lots of bullies and other assorted assholes. Being a boomer kid, there were 65-ish plus/minus kids of the same age, so there were two classes of 30+ kids in each for my 5th and 6th grades.

My memory is that the 5th grade teacher, Mrs. Strickland, was simply overwhelmed. Very little control of her classroom. And I cannot remember any aides.

One lad was a loudmouth showoff. He had to constantly do or say something that got him attention and distracted the rest of the class from whatever the lesson was. On the playground he was worse. Yelling and disrupting the various games kids play. Always needing to be the center of attention.

I do remember he often was removed from the classroom for an hour or two. I suspect he was in the office getting some psychological counseling.

In 6th grade the disrupter was in the other class with Mrs. Pendergast. My class was with Mr. Bowen. Mr. Bowen was the teacher I remember most as he taught me to read for pleasure at high word per minute rates. I'm far lower now than what I was then, but I still devour many different sorts of tales, from history to far future fiction.

7th grade was junior high and that school combined 4 or 5 grade schools, so the loudmouth was lost among the multitude.

I've wondered from time to time what happened to some of those kids? Did they ever grow out of their asshole ways and make a successful life?

Dominions Son… Bless your heart. Did you grow up in the greater Portland Oregon area?

Switch Blayde 🚫

@NC-Retired

Y'all are talking about what you or your momma use(d).

I quoted what I found on the internet in multiple places. A small knife.

Dominions Son 🚫

@NC-Retired

Y'all are talking about what you or your momma use(d).

From what you said in the OP:

Before chrome clippers were ubiquitous at every store checkout register

I will note that while chrome/steel nail clippers have been around longer than that, it is within my lifetime that they became "ubiquitous at every store checkout register".

LupusDei 🚫
Updated:

@NC-Retired

I routinely use the break-off disposable blade cardboard knife (the large type ostensibly used by 9-11 terrorists to kidnap the planes) to cut my fingernails and toenails alike. I have never hurt myself, but I freely admit that I'm exceptionally good with the tool mentioned. I find it the easiest, fastest and cleanest way.

Scissors break the nail making the end of nail to layer off if not filed over after the cut. I have used the clipper, on self and others, but I actually hurt myself with it several times cutting too deep, especially one toe that has weird geometry. I won't attack anyone else's nails with the knife, but on myself, I find that the most confident and controllable, and it doesn't need file if the cut is done right, at a slight downward angle. I can and sometimes do slice off sub millimeter lines if I'm not entirely happy with the first results.

So yes, I would say any kind of a sharp knife is how people likely did it without/before special tools. It must be sharp. Like, as in, *SHARP*. Dull knife is always dangerous and no better than scissors on nails, at least mine. I have cut my nails with a carpenter's chisel, almost as good a tool; a knife is a knife, however formed, all that matters it's sharp and familiar to use.

If the nail is overgrown enough, one can break and tear away the excess in a controlled way (yes, have done that, but that's dangerous as the nail can tear too deep), then finish with whatever half decent blade or abrasive object at hand. Or yes, bit it (although I would suggest using abrasive, a nail file of any kind, premade or improvised, after biting nails, at least I need that because of the dislayering.

Replies:   NC-Retired
NC-Retired 🚫
Updated:

@LupusDei

Thank you for your reply.

Questions... how long does this maintenance take? Minutes? Hours? Frequency?

What I am trying to come to grips with is the amount of time that an ancestor of 500 to 5000 years ago had to devote to personal care and cleanliness.

Shrug... I simply cannot guess the time required for wipe your ass, scrub it clean, cut the nails, make the body less stinky activities.

So many tales here on SOL have a protagonist (and author) that simply ignores how much time it takes to pee, poop, clean and be less offensive to the surrounding characters.

Morning ablutions... Hah! Very few define the time needed.

Replies:   Switch Blayde  LupusDei
Switch Blayde 🚫

@NC-Retired

Morning ablutions... Hah! Very few define the time needed.

That's a good thing.

Alfred Hitchcock said: "Drama is life without the boring bits."

Replies:   NC-Retired  NC-Retired
NC-Retired 🚫

@Switch Blayde

I don't want any details, just account for the time required.

My daily reality requires about 1 out of 24 hours of personal maintenance.

Other people may need more or less time for personal care.

Replies:   Paladin_HGWT
Paladin_HGWT 🚫

@NC-Retired

5 to 10 minutes for the "3 Ss" (Shit, Shower, and Shave).

My time on the commode is the longest. I typically turn on the Shower to warm the water, take care of business on the throne. Hop in the shower, shampoo, rinse, apply soap and wash, rinse. Lather and shave by feel. Turn off the water, towel off, apply deodorant.

Put on deodorant and clothes.

Short hair ("4 & 2") (electric trimmer 4 = 1")

NC-Retired 🚫
Updated:

@Switch Blayde

A bit more after my first cup of coffee...

There are many tales here on SOL where the characters go and do some activity and never pause to eat, drink, poop or pee.

Again, I don't need to know the color of the urine or the solidness of the turd, but just the fact that they took the time for biological functions.

There are many tales where eating and drinking is detailed, almost zero tales where the character says, "Excuse me for a few minutes while I take care of nature."

As mentioned, my experience is that my daily routine involves between 4 and 5% of the day in bodily maintenance of some sort. That includes showers, shaving, tooth brushing and all the other bio functions.

Toss in preparing a meal, eating and drinking... and the time spent maintaining the body is up to 6 or 7% of the 24 hours in a day.

As an author, please just acknowledge that from time to time your characters are human and have the need for a break in the drama for a bio break.

Oh, don't forget to clip the finger and toe nails!

LupusDei 🚫

@NC-Retired

Questions... how long does this maintenance take? Minutes? Hours? Frequency?

Unanswerable for a general case. As to myself and attending a single broken nail on demand, that's entirely defined by the logistics. The action itself is literally single movement -- seconds. If I decide to do all other for once, or say, look at them before going out and decide they need attention, perhaps fifteen minutes. Unless, going into full manicure mode (have done that too, especially when I presented feminine for a few masquerades in my teens).

Or... once in a while I polish my thumbnails. Literally, not applied polish, but usig progressively finer abrasive polish the surface of the nail itself. That's a rather lazy time affair, it take a while. Anyhow, there's no definitive schedule, happen by demand or whim. Once two-three weeks is perhaps minimum demand for a basic cut.

Toenails I typically do after bath, but not every time, so perhaps similarly.

What I am trying to come to grips with is the amount of time that an ancestor of 500 to 5000 years ago had to devote to personal care and cleanliness.

Entirely defined by the culture of the people in question.

My answer?

Two to six hours once a week, when we talk about deliberate, regular, general washing.

I believe that's a rather healthy base assumption, but it may, and did, vary wildly. My answer is based in north-east European sauna culture among working class.

The pre-planned sauna was heated one per week (with may or not have been 9 days long pre-christian times) and the best part of that day was dedicated to the sauna ritual. That was the primary means of general body washing, but doesn't include functional washing (like, hands, face, genitals (especially for women) or necessity after especially dirty work or alike. Nor, swimming. Weather permitted, that could as well be daily during the warm season.

(The sauna process itself, on demand at other times, or in modern setting, that typically take about one and a half to two hours, although can be rushed down to fourty minutes, or extended pretty much indefinitely.)

In medieval western Europe there was a religious stigma against washing (because of the badly contaminated surface waters in cities) and people didn't do it, presumably. And I mean they did not wash (at least not in modern sense) at all for months to years. It's less awful than you think. Washing is, up to a point, entirely optional. Body pretty much clean itself given a chance, within limits. I have myself lived for over three months without washing and thus can give some pointers how to manage in such a situation. (Like, being sweaty is an opportunity to scrub off dirt with a rag.)

And that's why French royal curt changed clothes up to six times a day. (It's hard for us from the age of mechanization to wrap the head about how expensive it was... with each outfit priced in order of a new car in modern money, that's like million $$ a day in clothing for the certain king who ostensibly never reused them... well, he was that rich.) They also consumed ample amounts of perfume.

And of course, it doesn't mean those people didn't have their own toiletry rituals. How much time those took, that's almost entirely their own choice.

As to actual toilet... again, it's mostly defined by the logistics of the act. If I sleep in the attic of the house and go pee outside behind the barn, time spent walking wastly exceeds the time actually urinating. Same with defecation. Finding the place/opportunity for that is most of it, beyond that it's perhaps less than ten minutes a day on average. Anything between twice a day and twice a week is considered normal.

By person experience, it is possible to go three days without peeing and up to a week without defecating (especially if one doesn't eat too much, if at all, at the same time).

So, I would say, a superhero on a mission never doing anything at all of it isn't necessary that unrealistic, up to a point.

richardshagrin 🚫

@LupusDei

polish my thumbnails

Why would you identify them as being from Poland?

DBActive 🚫
Updated:

@LupusDei

In medieval western Europe there was a religious stigma against washing (because of the badly contaminated surface waters in cities) and people didn't do it, presumably. And I mean they did not wash (at least not in modern sense) at all for months to years. It's less awful than you think.

That's a myth. They bathed regularly either at home or on public bathhouse. Just think about it - modern soap was a medieval invention, the ancients didn't have it. What do you think they used the soap for if not bathing?

Replies:   Dominions Son  irvmull
Dominions Son 🚫

@DBActive

They bathed regularly either at home or on public bathhouse.

What you consider regularly requires a definition here.

In a world without indoor plumbing and running water, bathing would be more time consuming than it is for us.

Heating enough water for baths for an entire family at home wouldn't have been quick or easy. That's why they had bathhouses.

Replies:   DBActive  awnlee jawking
DBActive 🚫

@Dominions Son

Probably washing daily and weekly bathing. At least that's what historians say.

awnlee jawking 🚫

@Dominions Son

What you consider regularly requires a definition here.

For the poor, regular meant once or twice a year - something that continued until victorian times.

AJ

Replies:   DBActive
DBActive 🚫

@awnlee jawking

No.

irvmull 🚫
Updated:

@DBActive

That's a myth. They bathed regularly either at home or on public bathhouse. Just think about it - modern soap was a medieval invention, the ancients didn't have it. What do you think they used the soap for if not bathing?

A formula for making soap was written on a Sumerian clay tablet around 2500 BC; the soap was produced by heating a mixture of oil and wood ash, the earliest recorded chemical reaction, and used for washing woolen clothing.

The 2nd-century AD physician Galen describes soap-making using lye and prescribes washing to carry away impurities from the body and clothes. The use of soap for personal cleanliness became increasingly common in this period. According to Galen, the best soaps were Germanic, and soaps from Gaul were second best. Zosimos of Panopolis, circa 300 AD, describes soap and soapmaking.

As to the "regularly" part - once a week was regular enough for most people.

After all, hauling water from a well, heating it, etc. is quite a bit more work than turning a shower handle.

Up until the 16th century - then people in Europe (except for scandinavia) pretty much quit bathing.

Replies:   DBActive
DBActive 🚫

@irvmull

That's why I said modern soap. The methods changed in the middle ages to produce soap more like those in use in the last century.

Replies:   irvmull
irvmull 🚫

@DBActive

That's why I said modern soap. The methods changed in the middle ages to produce soap more like those in use in the last century.

Well, OK, they didn't have soap that floats (Ivory) but the ingredents of modern soaps are exactly the same as Galen's formula. Plus a few artificial scents. The ancients used natural scents, if they added any.

But you are right. The methods are different.
Modern soaps are made in huge vats.
2,000 years ago people had only small pots.

Replies:   Dominions Son
Dominions Son 🚫

@irvmull

2,000 years ago people had only small pots.

My understanding is that if you go back to the Roman empire or farther, they didn't have solid bar soap. The soap they had was an oil based liquid.

I believe that's what DBActive was referring to.

Of course over the last several decades we've been moving back towards liquid soaps.

Replies:   irvmull
irvmull 🚫
Updated:

@Dominions Son

My understanding is that if you go back to the Roman empire or farther, they didn't have solid bar soap. The soap they had was an oil based liquid.

I believe that's what DBActive was referring to.

Of course over the last several decades we've been moving back towards liquid soaps.

Castile soap is made with olive oil, and comes in bars.

Whether it's a bar or remains liquid is all about the ratio of ingredients (lye, fat, water, and perhaps sodium). Salt is added to harden liquid soaps.

IOW, pretty much the leftovers from a stone-age cookout, if you think about it. :)

"BBQ good. Uggh wash up now."

awnlee jawking 🚫
Updated:

@LupusDei

Washing is, up to a point, entirely optional.

The importance of regular washing to prevent the spread of disease only became recognised in the last couple of hundred years or so (and even today, hospital doctors are a major vector for the spread of diseases in hospitals because many still refuse to cleanse their hands between patients). Before that, it was a luxury, particularly in the colder regions of Northern Europe, indulged in principally by those rich in time and money.

And now the pendulum is starting to swing in the other direction. Who would have thought even twenty years ago that some people could be made healthier by consuming the faecal matter of others to improve their gut biomes? And we're currently only just discovering the importance of skin biomes, although the pharmaceutical industry has a large stake in people continuing to overwash their skin so they can flog expensive moisturisers etc to cover up the skin and skin biome damage.

It turns out that body-to-body skin massages are actually rather good for you because they spread the good bacteria in skin biomes. ;-)

AJ

Replies:   awnlee jawking
awnlee jawking 🚫

@awnlee jawking

Who would have thought even twenty years ago that some people could be made healthier by consuming the faecal matter of others to improve their gut biomes? And we're currently only just discovering the importance of skin biomes, although the pharmaceutical industry has a large stake in people continuing to overwash their skin so they can flog expensive moisturisers etc to cover up the skin and skin biome damage.

In his regular Saturday newspaper column, one of the Daily Mail's pseudo-doctors claimed that the bacteria in the skin biome are very similar to the bacteria in the gut biome, and applications of faecal matter can improve the skin biome, leading to plumper, firmer, younger-looking skin.

Puts a new spin on going to the pub and getting shit-faced ;-)

AJ

happytechguy15 🚫

@NC-Retired

Interesting question! Would "cavemen" need to trim finger and toe nails? Maybe nails were kept long for weapons! In our house we joke about needing to trim velociraptor toenails!

NC-Retired 🚫
Updated:

@NC-Retired

Lots of interesting info for authors that are, or might, write tales set in times from a couple hundred to a thousand years ago.

My reading of history suggests that before religious puritanism had a major impact on whether folks would take their clothes off to bathe, communal baths were a big parts of the social strata in various Mediterranean civilizations for the past several thousand years.

That and 'learned medicine' did not have any clues beyond bleeding out the bad humors. Herbalists with the potions and salves were what most folks had available.

I always love the modern guy that is transported back somehow and brings the most basic first aid knowledge to provide 'miracle cures'.

I wonder how many infected toenails there were?

Replies:   DBActive
DBActive 🚫

@NC-Retired

Co.munal bathhouse were common up until the 1600s throughout Europe. The religious problem related to the bathhouse sometimes really being whorehouses.

awnlee jawking 🚫

@NC-Retired

From yesterday's paper

GUESS THE DEFINITION

Onychomancy (coined 1652)

A) Divination using fingernails,
B) Divination by tossed pebbles.
C) Divination by picking a passage of poetry at random.

(My browser must predate 1652 because it has underlined onychomancy)

AJ

Replies:   Dominions Son
Dominions Son 🚫

@awnlee jawking

I will use the context of you posting this on this particular thread to guess A.

Replies:   awnlee jawking
awnlee jawking 🚫

@Dominions Son

I will use the context of you posting this on this particular thread to guess A.

It had to be, didn't it!

AJ

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