Shampoo, story of a modern tradition

Would you ever have thought that Shampoo, a product so essential to our personal hygiene that we use almost every day, was a rather recent invention?

That’s right: shampoo as we know it was invented in the early decades of the 20th century. Its story begins in India, and through the English colonists it arrived in Europe. Let’s discover how!

Shampoo means massage

The custom of shampoo, or champo, comes from India, and was imported to England in the second half of the 1700s. The word champo in Hindi means “to apply pressure, to massage” and recalls the massage applied during the cleansing of the hair. Around those years Sheik al-Din Mohammad exported this custom in Europe, opening the first center for hygiene and therapeutic massage in Brighton. Among the various services offered, in this center it was also possible to book a champo, that is a cleansing and massage of the skin and hair.

Shampoo in the past

In the past there have been many ingredients and rituals for washing skin and hair, let’s see some of them.

In ancient Egypt a mixture of vinegar and water was used to rub the scalp and lengths. Romans, instead, used a sort of soap made of ashes mixed with lard and other fatty substances. In this case, the cleansing was more for the slightly abrasive and absorbent action of the ash, while the oils dissolved the excess sebum on the skin.

During the Middle Ages shampoo was made by mixing alcohol (often brandy) with eggs or even sulfur. Women used to wear their hair always styled away from the face, in braids and gathered hairstyles, and cover themselves with a veil. These hairstyles made the hair much less dirty.

The invention of the modern shampoo

Shampoo as we know it, a detergent containing surfactants that produce foam and cleanse the skin, is a recent invention. The first shampoos date back to the late 1800s, and consisted of powders to be dissolved in water, invented by chemist Hans Schwartzkopf. Until then, shampoo was made by boiling together soap flakes, with the addition of scented oils. These soaps had a pH level not suitable for cleansing hair, therefore it is likely that the frizzy hair effect was much more common at that time than today. To see the very first shampoo similar to ours today, and specifically formulated for washing the head, we will have to wait until the 1930s, when the first shampoo in liquid form and composed of synthetic ingredients was introduced to the market. 

For many years that would have been the only option on the market. Up until today, when the choice is endless and there are shampoos for every need. Have you tried Insight shampoos? Delicate and effective, discover all the Insight haircare lines and find the one that suits you best.