Before there was toilet paper?

Question

Ok, I'm wondering what did people do b4 they invented toilet paper? Did they use like a leaf or something?

Answer 1

They used the Sears catalog.

Answer 2

The Sears Catalogue!!  Seriously.

Bedays (wrong spelling but you know what I mean.)

Prior to that, good question.  They probably didn't create as much "waste" as we do in these days.  Food was used to fuel the body and there wasn't preservatives, fillers, and junk that we eat.  These days, we're just "full of it!!"  :-)

Answer 3

no actually, they used their left hand to whipe.  Im not joking.  In fact, this is still common practice in poor places in the middle east.  This is why when people shake hands, they shake with their right hands.  It was very insulting to shake with your left hand.  

Answer 4

Take you hand and just wipe your *** while you pour water down your *** from behind.  

Answer 5

Here's from Wikipedia... gotta LUV Wikipedia!!

Although paper had been known as a wrapping and padding material in China since the 2nd century BC, the first use of toilet paper in human history dates back to the 6th century AD, in early medieval China. In 589 AD the scholar-official Yan Zhitui (531–591) wrote about the use of toilet paper:

"Paper on which there are quotations or commentaries from Five Classics or the names of sages, I dare not use for toilet purposes".

During the later Tang Dynasty (618–907 AD) a Muslim Arab traveler to China in the year 851 AD remarked:

"They (the Chinese) are not careful about cleanliness, and they do not wash themselves with water when they have done their necessities; but they only wipe themselves with paper."

During the early 14th century (Yuan Dynasty) it was recorded that in modern-day Zhejiang province alone there was an annual manufacturing of toilet paper amounting in ten million packages of 1,000 to 10,000 sheets of toilet paper each. During the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644 AD), it was recorded in 1393 that 720,000 sheets of toilet paper (two by three feet in size) were produced for the general use of the Imperial court at the capital of Nanjing. From the records of the Imperial Bureau of Supplies (Bao Chao Si) of that same year, it was also recorded that for Emperor Hongwu's imperial family alone, there were 15,000 sheets of special soft-fabric toilet paper made, and each sheet of toilet paper was even perfumed.

Elsewhere, wealthy people used wool, lace or hemp for their ablutions, while less wealthy people used their hand when defecating into rivers, or cleaned themselves with various materials such as rags, wood shavings, leaves, grass, hay, stone, sand, moss, water, snow, maize husks, fruit skins, or seashells, and cob of the corn depending upon the country and weather conditions or social customs. In Ancient Rome, a sponge on a stick was commonly used, and, after usage, placed back in a bucket of saltwater.

The 16th century French satirical writer François Rabelais in his series of novels Gargantua and Pantagruel, discussing the various ways of cleansing oneself at the toilet, wrote that: "He who uses paper on his filthy bum, will always find his ballocks lined with scum", proposing that the soft feathers on the back of a live goose provide an optimum cleansing medium.

The Scott Brothers are often cited as being the first to sell rolled and perforated toilet paper, but unless they were doing so without a patent, the beginning of toilet paper and dispensers familiar in the 21st century is with Seth Wheeler of Albany, NY, who obtained several patents. The first of note is for the idea of perforating commercial papers (25 July 1871, #117355), the application for which includes an illustration of a perforated roll of paper. On 13 February 1883 he was granted patent #272369, which presented a roll of perforated wrapping or toilet paper supported in the center with a tube. Wheeler also had patents for mounted brackets that held the rolls. Under the name Albany Perforated Wrapping Paper Co., the product was manufactured as early as 1886 at their factory just north of downtown Albany.

In many parts of the world, especially where toilet paper or the necessary plumbing for disposal may be unavailable or unaffordable, toilet paper is not used. Cleansing is then performed with other methods or materials, such as water, for example using a bidet, rags, sand, leaves (including seaweed), corn cobs, animal furs, or sticks.

======= So there you have the "straight p**p" !!!!!

Have a polite day.

Answer 6

Some did yes, and in some cultures it was normal to use their hand, not either, just one particular hand (seriously, and that is how the right-handed hand shake came to be.  As well, if someone was caught stealing in that culture they sometimes cut off the hand they did not wipe with so no one would want to shake their hand...therefore knowing that the person was a less than honest individual).  

I will not say who they were in case I am wrong....and I wouldn't want to offend someone.  Hopefully, someone will have the brass to tell us who it was, even I am curious.  Mean Mike

Wow, just realized I won't make points from this.  Oh well, it'll be worth it if someone tells us, eh?

Answer 7

Actually, they used the undesirable pages of the Sears catalogue ... at least that's what I hear from my older relatives.  They also used dried corncobs -- certainly you've heard that old expression.  

Have also heard tales that the in other countries, they eat their meals from a common bowl.  It is tradition to eat with your right, wipe with your left ... so thieves are punished by cutting off the right hand.  The criminal is shunned by all, including family, and eventually dies of starvation.  Of course this could all be tall tales.

Answer 8

I think it depends on each culture, but in the early 1800s in the US, they would use leaves. But that's all I know of.

Answer 9

As usual wiki has an answer for everything

"Elsewhere, wealthy people used wool, lace or hemp for their ablutions, while less wealthy people used their hand when defecating into rivers, or cleaned themselves with various materials such as rags, wood shavings, leaves, grass, hay, stone, sand, moss, water, snow, maize husks, fruit skins, or seashells, and cob of the corn depending upon the country and weather conditions or social customs. In Ancient Rome, a sponge on a stick was commonly used, and, after usage, placed back in a bucket of saltwater."

Answer 10

They let it turn to dust & farted it out.

Answer 11

my brother just spent 5 weeks in alaska training for the naval academy

in alaska there is little vegetation where he was, and honest to god, he told me they used rocks...