How to Make Medieval Soap
medievalists.net
medievalists.net
My understanding is that yes, it will be safer purely because it's a weaker lye solution. It'll be more likely to completely react, and even if it doesn't it will be more dilute and less likely to cause skin problems or burning. But it'll be slower, and less reliable to get the right concentrations to make the same soap over and over.
Will come in handy during the coming climate apocalypse.
It may reduce your potential customers a bit, especially at a particularly crunchy farmer's market, but the soap will be fine :)
No real reason why this, blended well to a reasonable pH level, would not be as effective as what we have today.
We don't need to wipe off every drop of our skin oil every day in order to eliminate bad smells or function regularly and healthfully around others.
The point is that it's a very plain soap and goes back to the 14th century.
(I had linked to the English wikipedia article but it's the French one that has more details, sorry for the confusion.)
It works great, it cleans well and I haven't had any issues with dry skin since we started using it.
The only real downside is that we get a bit of soap scum in the shower, but it's manageable.