Quote Originally Posted by Vladimir
There was some consideration of personal hygiene in Germany where some bath houses did exist. This is in sharp contrast to some loony group in France that believed bathing excessively (as in more than twice a year) was harmful to the body.
Hey, monks rarely bathed. Know what it was referred to as ? Le odore sancte... Fact is, for the duration of Middle Ages and well afterwards Europe just plain smelled pretty bad for the most part.

Historical realism ends when you hit the "next turn" button so I don't think it's unreasonable for a player to stress public health more than Medieval Europeans.
Heh. Well, we do happen to have the benefit of actually knowing the whys and hows of diseases and the germ theory. And note that we've only had it since about mid-1800s... you can read some pretty grim stories on how crazy things were, by our standards, in for example hospitals back then. Would you believe it took rudimentary comparative statistical analysis of childbed death rates before folks started figuring out there might be a point in doctors-in-training desinfecting their hands after the morning's autopsy session before they went on to the gynecology wing...?

Ugh. It's not actually such a wonder folks became pretty obsessive-compulsive about cleanliness and hygienie for a while once the microbes were figured out.