curious incident of the face washing

Frank Muir's An Irreverent and Almost Complete History of the Bathroom contains 2 quotations from Andrew Boorde (1490-1549) which seem to contradict each other:

When you do rise in the morning, rise with mirth, and remember God. Let your hose be brushed within and without, and flavour the inside of them against the fire: use linen socks or linen hose next to your legs. When you be out of your bed, stretch forth your legs and your arms, and your body; cough and spit, and then go to your stool to make your egestion; and exonerate yourself at all times that nature would expel. After you have evacuated your body and trussed your points, comb your head oft, and so do diverse times in the day. And wash your hands and wrists, your face and eyes, and your teeth, with cold water.
-- Dyetary

So here he directs the reader to wash the face at least once a day (in addition to evacuating the body on a regular basis, coughing and spitting.

But another quote, allegedly by the same author though not in the same text, suggests otherwise:

To clere, to cleanse, and to mundifie* the face use stufes+ and bathes, and euery mornyne after keymyng of the head, wype the face with a Skarlet** cloth, and wash not the face oft, but ones a weke anoynt the face a lytle ouer with the oyle of Costine, and use to eat Electuary de aromatibus, or the confection of Anacardine, or the syrupe of Fumitery, or confection of Manna . . .
-- Breuyary of Health

* mundify: "To cleanse, purify (a thing)"; also Med. "To rid (a wound, etc.) of pus or other matter." OED.
+ Stufe: "A hot-air bath: = STOVE" OED
** Skarlet or scarlet would be a type of wool, I believe, not just scarlet cloth.

Which might seem to imply that the face was only to be washed once a week, but given that the reader is directed to use hot-air baths (sweats) and regular baths, perhaps the idea is less to discourage the washing of the face than to suggest that continually washing of the face, as school health teachers in vain tell teenagers, is not as helpful as it is believed to be. Certainly, there are few references to washing with a cloth. Is the cloth in this case wet or dry? we are not told.

Frank Muir on ancient alternatives to toilet paper

Frank Muir. An Irreverent and Almost Complete Social History of the Bathroom. New York: Stein and Day, 1983.

In ancient times, before the invention of paper, the cleaning-off problem was solved in a number of ways. Water was the answer where water existed. Failign that it was a matter of using a scraper or an abrasive.
The Romans favored a kind of minature hockey-stick (in wood or precious metal according to the user's status, or a sponge on the end of the stick . . .
In desert areas it was normal to use sand, powdered brick, or earth. A book on Muslim law published as late as 1882 . . . recommends using stones: 'There shall be three stones employed or three sides of the same stone'.
A favourite scraper throughout the ages, probably because of its convenient shape and easy availability, was a mussel shell.</blockquote. Aside from the Muslim law text, of course, Muir gives no sources. *rolls eyes* though he does quote a mention of the mussel-shell in a 1751 text, which doesn't date it to our period.

Outdoor bathing in poetry

hm....
Muir points out this scandalous poem by Robert Herrick (1591–1674):

Upon Julia['s] Washing Herself in the River
How fierce was I, when I did see
My Julia wash her self in thee!
So Lillies thorough Christall look:
So purest pebbles in the brook:
As in the River Julia did,
Halfe with a Lawne of water hid,
Into thy streames my self I threw,
And strugling there, I kist thee too;
And more had done (it is confest)
Had not thy waves forbad the rest.

More bathing poems:
Corinna Bathes by George Chapman(1559?–1634)

And
"Lover, Being Wounded at the Bathe, Sues Unto His Lady For Pitie"
Whetstone, George (1544?–1587)

I bathing late, in bathes of sovereigne ease,
Not in those bathes where beauties blisse doth flowe,
But even at Bathe, which many a guest doth please;
But loe mishap! those waves hath wrought my woe.
There love I sawe her seemely selfe to lave,
Whose sightly shape so sore my heart did heate,
That soone I shund those streames my selfe to save;
But scorching sighes so set mee in a sweate,
That loe! I pine to please my peevish will,
And yet I freese with frostes of chilling feare.