Cowboys Used This Painful Wild West Hygiene Tactic To Kill Body Odor

Unless you're particularly well-versed in the day-to-day lives of cowboys working hard out on the frontier, you're probably not aware that bathing wasn't considered good hygiene in the Wild West — or that they used sulfur matches to combat body odor on those long, hot days out on the open plains with only enough water for drinking and watering their horses. Enter cowboy deodorant, the process of striking the tip of a sulfur match, blowing it out, and then rubbing the sulfur from the match on the armpits. 

And poof! Suddenly, the stench of the rugged cowboys' body odor pales in comparison to the overpowering rotten egg aroma coming from the sulfur. Never mind the fact that it probably didn't feel all too good rubbing the hot remnants of the match on their tender armpits. So, yeah, go ahead and add sulfur to the list of ingredients you don't want to see in your deodorant.

"I don't recommend trying it today," Chip Schweiger, host of the "Way Out West" podcast, quipped during an episode about cowboy hygiene on the frontier. "But it worked well enough to keep the worst stink at bay." As the old saying goes, beauty is pain. 

So what exactly made this painful cowboy hygiene tactic effective at masking body odor? It's all about our olfactory receptors and their extreme sensitivity to the scent of sulfur, according to Eric Block, a professor of chemistry at the University of Albany and the co-author of a 2016 study in the Journal of the American Chemical Society about the science of sulfur's terrible smell.

"Our collaborative research shows nature has developed a way to make sure we have maximum possible sensitivity to sulfur, since often the presence of sulfur compounds signals a hazard," Block explained (via the University of Albany News Center). Basically, our noses are so sensitive to sulfur's particular smell that it tends to mask other awful scents, even a cowboy's weeks-old body odor.

While it's no secret that hygiene has looked very different throughout history, there are much better methods for remedying body odor that don't involve rubbing hot sulfur on your armpits. The best ways to stop body odor without deodorant include changing your diet and applying natural compounds like tea tree oil, baking soda, and even hydrogen peroxide to your underarms (which, of course, weren't actually feasible for cowboys out in the Wild West).