Did people in the Middle Ages take baths?

One of my regrets is that I don't get a chance to take more baths. Actually I don't think I have had a bath in the past several years. Or if I did, kids, I don't remember. I do remember bathing with both of you when you were babies. And then I would pour water on your face and both of you would HOWL and go all red and complain. 

Now it's all showers and quick clean. Funny history behind baths. I read up so much on Roman baths and how scientific they were 2000 years now. 

Fascinating how history changes. 

Love

Baba

Did people in the Middle Ages take baths? - Medievalists.net
http://www.medievalists.net/2013/04/13/did-people-in-the-middle-ages-take-baths/

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It is often thought that medieval men and women did not care too much about personal hygiene or keeping clean. One nineteenth-century historian writing about daily life in the Middle Ages commented that there were no baths for a thousand years. However, a closer look shows that baths and bathing were actually quite common in the Middle Ages, but in a different way than one might expect.

There are stories of how people didn’t bathe in the Middle Ages – for example, St Fintan of Clonenagh was said to take a bath only once a year, just before Easter, for twenty-four years. Meanwhile, the Anglo-Saxons were believed that the Vikings were overly concerned with cleanliness since they took a bath once a week.  On the other hand, we can also see many literary references and works of art depicting people taking baths, and noting that it was part of daily activity.

Personal hygiene did exist in the Middle Ages – people were well aware that cleaning their face and hands – health manuals from the period note that it was important to get rid of dirt and grime. They also explained that it was important to keep the entire body clean. For example, the fourteenth-century writer Magninius Mediolanesis stated in his work Regimen sanitatis that ”The bath cleans the external body parts of dirt left behind from exercise on the outside of the body.”

He also adds a second reason for bathing: “if any of the waste products of third digestion are left under the skin that were not resolved by exercise and massage, these will be resolved by the bath.” There was a strong connection between bathing and eating, which could affect one’s overall health (these ideas have not quite left us – many people might remember their mother telling them not to go swimming for an hour after a meal). Baths could relieve digestion, stop diarrhoea – but taken improperly cold lead to weakness of the heart, nausea or fainting.