How did mattresses get the name foam? Sounds like the sea and ocean waves. The original was foam rubber from rubber tree sap - natural latex. The sap from the trees is frothed up and baked to create a foam. Like a cake, I guess.
Looking up latex, I found an article on memory foam with this warning of "its piercing chemical odour, the off-gassing of toxic chemical compounds—and also its tendency to trap heat."
And there's more:
"It’s a chemical reaction with your body heat that causes memory foam to take its famous imprint of your shape. Without the chemicals, and without body heat buildup, there is no reaction. This is why many memory foam mattresses can feel too hard when it's cold and supportive enough when it's warm."
Clearly this is a website for natural latex mattresses, as it continues:
"Sleeping on memory foam, on the other hand, you can feel immobilized. It’s novel at first, but after a while, you may feel as though you’re stuck in damp sand. And every time you change positions, you have to heat up the foam all over again. This causes restlessness and circulation issues."
That's a lot about something we take for granted now. Gone are the days of straw beds. Latex shows up in a few more places. That's why there are lots of recipes and information about how make and bake foam latex. It is used for moves in stop motion animation and costumes. The Wizard of Oz is referenced in the Wikipedia article as the first movie to use it extensively.
There are many mattress jokes, but they aren't all that funny to me. I sometimes wonder how "joke" gets applied to these strange little stories. People somewhere must laugh.
Here are the two I find very good indeed and do hope you laugh:
What's another word for a mattress? A loaf of bed.
You've woken up on the wrong side of the bed. Shut up, he replied, and get this mattress off me.
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