Thanks Nicol for an interesting article. While it’s true that many people during the long medieval period did pay attention to their cleanliness, to varying degrees, it’s also true that a complete lack of germ theory meant these efforts were significantly diminished by their other practices such as throwing urine & feces out into the street (which is why even today you can find streets in European towns with the classic V shape so that it would all flow, slowly, maybe, down the central gutter) and by locating toilets near to areas of food preparation and cooking, as per New College, Oxford, where they’d empty the latrines located adjacent to the kitchen once every 20 years or so when they were full to the brim.