From Soap Avoidance to Skin Cleansing with Synthetic Detergents — Moving into the Clinical Dimension

The earliest effective skin cleansing agent (apart from plain water) used by man was soap. The history of soap goes back some 5000 years. There are references to the use of soap in Sumerian clay tablets dating from ca. 2500 B.C. In those days, soap was made from vegetable oils and potash, producing what we would nowadays call a soft soap.