The Dirt on Clean: An Unsanitized History
- ISBN-10
- 0676976638
- ISBN-13
- 9780676976632
- Category
- Bathing customs
- Pages
- 370
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2007
- Publisher
- Knopf Canada
- Author
- Katherine Ashenburg
Description
For the first-century Roman, being clean meant a public two-hour soak in baths of various temperatures, a scraping of the body with a miniature rake, and a final application of oil. For the seventeenth-century aristocratic Frenchman, it meant changing his shirt once a day, using perfume to obliterate both his own aroma and everyone else’s, but never immersing himself in – horrors! – water. By the early 1900s, an extraordinary idea took hold in North America – that frequent bathing, perhaps even a daily bath, was advisable. Not since the Roman Empire had people been so clean, and standards became even more extreme as the millennium approached. Now we live in a deodorized world where germophobes shake hands with their elbows and where sales of hand sanitizers, wipes and sprays are skyrocketing. The apparently routine task of taking up soap and water (or not) is Katherine Ashenburg’s starting point for a unique exploration of Western culture, which yields surprising insights into our notions of privacy, health, individuality, religion and sexuality. Ashenburg searches for clean and dirty in plague-ridden streets, medieval steam baths, castles and tenements, and in bathrooms of every description. She reveals the bizarre rescriptions of history’s doctors as well as the hygienic peccadilloes of kings, mistresses, monks and ordinary citizens, and guides us through the twists and turns to our own understanding of clean, which is no more rational than the rest. Filled with amusing anecdotes and quotations from the great bathers of history,The Dirt on Cleantakes us on a journey that is by turns intriguing, humorous, startling and not always for the squeamish. Ashenburg’s tour of history’s baths and bathrooms reveals much about our changing and most intimate selves – what we desire, what we ignore, what we fear, and a significant part of who we are.
Get the book
Other editions
Similar books
-
The Book of the Bath
By Françoise de BonnevilleRevealing the secrets of bathrooms from the hedonistic world of the Roman thermae to the medieval bath-house, and from the 19th-century cabinet de toilette to the modern bathroom, this is an illustrated account of bathing through the ages.
-
Sheds on the Seashore: A Tour Through Beach Hut History
By Kathryn FerryTogether they tell the story of how beach huts came into being and why them remain so beloved by their twenty-first century owners"--Back cover.
-
Public Baths and Bathing Habits in Late Antiquity: A Study of the Evidence from Italy, North Africa and Palestine A.D....
By Sadi MaréchalThis book examines the survival, transformation and eventual decline of Roman public baths and bathing habits in Italy, North Africa and Palestine during Late Antiquity.
-
The Way of the Japanese Bath
By Mark Edward HarrisThe Way of the Japanese Bath
-
Ronnie Barker's Book of Bathing Beauties
By Ronnie BarkerRonnie Barker's Book of Bathing Beauties
-
Have You Ever Seen a Moose Taking a Bath?
By Jamie McClaineWhen this moose takes a bath, he creates quite a scene with his rubber ducky, scrubbing brush, Mr. Moose Bubbles, and a belly-flop right into the water.
-
The Water Birth Book
By Janet BalaskasThe Waterbirth Book is the comprehensive guide to all aspects of waterbirth and the use of water throughout pregnancy and during infancy.
-
Bathing & Showering in Halachah: A Comprehensive Halachic Guide to the Laws of Bathing & Showering
By Mendy AbramsonBathing & Showering in Halachah: A Comprehensive Halachic Guide to the Laws of Bathing & Showering