Can I read The Dirt on Clean : An Unsanitized History on EtoBox?

The Dirt on Clean : An Unsanitized History by Katherine Ashenburg [Ashenburg, Katherine] is a health book available to read on EtoBox.

What is The Dirt on Clean : An Unsanitized History about?

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 d

Who reads The Dirt on Clean : An Unsanitized History?

Author

Katherine Ashenburg [Ashenburg, Katherine]

Publisher

Vintage Canada

Published

2007

Language

EN

ISBN

9780307368362

Category

health

Subjects

History, Anthropology, Health & Fitness

Rating

3.69 / 5 (63 ratings)

Updated

2026-03-14