Why a hot bath seemed risky
The reported monthly bath makes more sense in a world where disease was often blamed on miasma: foul or contaminated air thought to carry illness. People also believed that hot water opened the body’s pores. If harmful air could enter through those openings, a hot bath might seem less like protection from disease and more like an invitation for it to get inside.
That explanation was mistaken, but it shaped practical choices. Avoiding prolonged exposure to hot water could feel like a sensible precaution when plague was a feared and poorly understood threat. The concern was not simply that bathing was unpleasant; it was that bathing might leave the body vulnerable.
Cleanliness did not mean what it does now
A full-body bath was only one way to keep clean, and it was not necessarily the measure by which people judged everyday hygiene. Grooming and cleaning parts of the body, along with changing or washing linen, could matter more than soaking in a tub. So “once a month” does not tell us, by itself, how often Elizabeth or anyone else washed their hands, face, or clothes.
It also helps explain why a monthly bath could count as frequent by the standards of the time. The striking difference is not just how often people bathed, but what they thought bathing did: a routine we now associate with cleanliness could then be viewed as a possible breach in the body’s defenses.
