Editing Hygiene (section)

====Mesoamerica====
[[File:Codex Magliabechiano (folio 77r).jpg|thumbnail|right|[[Codex Magliabechiano]] from the Loubat collection, 1904]]
[[Spain|Spanish]] chronicles describe the bathing habits of the peoples of [[Mesoamerica]] during and after the [[Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire|conquest]].
[[Bernal Díaz del Castillo]] describes [[Moctezuma II|Moctezuma]] (the Mexica, or [[Aztec]], [[emperor]] at the arrival of [[Hernán Cortés|Cortés]]) in his {{Lang|es|Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España}} as being "...Very neat and cleanly, bathing every day each afternoon...".

Bathing was not restricted to the elite, but was practiced by all people; the chronicler Tomás López Medel wrote after a journey to [[Central America]] that " and the custom of washing oneself is so quotidian [common] amongst the Indians, both of cold and hot lands, as is eating, and this is done in fountains and rivers and other water to which they have access, without anything other than pure water..."<ref name="Noriega Hernández 2004">{{cite thesis |last=Noriega Hernández|first=Joana Cecilia|url=http://148.206.53.231/UAMI11028.PDF |title=El baño temascal novohispano, de Moctezuma a Revillagigedo. Reflexiones sobre prácticas de higiene y expresiones de sociabilidad|lang=es-MX|date=2004 |access-date=2012-12-18 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130406041619/http://148.206.53.231/UAMI11028.PDF |archive-date=2013-04-06 }}</ref>

The Mesoamerican bath, known as {{Lang|es|temazcal}} in [[Spanish language|Spanish]], from the Nahuatl word {{lang|nah|temazcalli}}, a compound of {{lang|nah|temaz}} ("steam") and {{lang|nah|calli}} ("house"), consists of a room, often in the form of a small dome, with an exterior firebox known as {{lang|nah|texictle}} ({{IPA|teʃict͜ɬe}}) that heats a small portion of the room's wall made of volcanic rocks; after this wall has been heated, water is poured on it to produce steam, an action known as {{lang|nah|tlasas}}. As the steam accumulates in the upper part of the room a person in charge uses a bough to direct the steam to the bathers who are lying on the ground, with which he later gives them a massage, then the bathers scrub themselves with a small flat river stone and finally the person in charge introduces buckets with water along with soap and grass used to rinse. This bath had also ritual importance, and was tied to the goddess [[Toci]]; it is also therapeutic when medicinal herbs are used in the water for the {{lang|nah|tlasas}}. It is still used in [[Mexico]].<ref name="Noriega Hernández 2004"/>