Introduction Eight Myths About Clean Washing ourselves doesn’t feed our hunger or quench our thirst or shelter us from the cold So why do we do it Kids might say Because our parents make us Adults might say Because it makes a good impression or Because being clean is healthy But throughout history people around the world have washed themselves for all kinds of reasons including to show respect to the gods cure their ailments and mark important changes in their lives At first glance a country’s bathrooms and bathhouses seem very ordinary It’s strange to think of them as windows into a people’s values and dreams but they are People’s attitudes toward dirt and cleanliness reveal a lot about the society they live in And since the earliest times people had theories behind all the ways they washed themselves Today we know that a lot of those theories were wrong But we still have many mistaken ideas myths about cleanliness Here are some of the big ones MYTH 1 The definition of cleanliness is universal The funny thing about clean and there are lots of funny things about it is that most people believe they know what clean is and think that theirs is the only definition Nothing could be further from the truth 4 All the Dirt
For an aristocratic seventeenth-century Frenchman clean meant changing his linen shirt every day and dabbing his hands in water but he never touched the rest of his body with water or soap For a Roman woman in the first century it meant two or more hours of splashing soaking and steaming her body in water of different temperatures and raking off her sweat and oil with a metal scraper She did this every day with lots of other women around and without using soap In the southern African country of Zimbabwe people don’t feel clean until they coat their washed bodies with a mixture of oil and dirt Along with your parents the Frenchman the Roman woman and the Zimbabwean were each convinced that cleanliness was important and that their way was the royal road to a properly clean body MYTH 2 Cleanliness depends on modern technology It’s true that plumbing and other engineering feats have made our modern Western standard of cleanliness possible but what’s much more important is whether people want to wash The Roman bathhouses had clever heating and water delivery systems that no one imitated for more than 13 centuries because water was scary and washing wasn’t a priority Long before modern saunas Aztecs and Navajos had figured out ways to enjoy steam baths 5 Introduction Eight Myths About Clean
MYTH 3 People were more or less filthy until around the start of the twentieth century Tell that to the ancient Egyptians Aztecs Chinese and Greeks who were pretty sensible about cleanliness and to the Romans who were extravagantly clean Even medieval Europeans enjoyed a regular trip to the local steam bath Especially in the West there is no straight line of progress from dirty to clean It’s all over the map MYTH 4 Doctors and scientists are the best sources of advice when it comes to cleanliness Not so at different periods in history some of the worst advice came from medical men and scientists Even today the experts don’t always agree on how important it is to be sparklingly clean MYTH 5 Washing is something you do in private In the West many of us do expect to be alone when we wash our naked bodies But for the Romans getting clean was a party And it still can be for modern Indonesians Turks Finns Hungarians and other people around the world who wash in company 6 All the Dirt
MYTH 6 Getting yourself clean is a personal ritual with no connection to the larger world Cleanliness is closely connected to religion culture geography and science all around the world It has been influenced by such things as the spread of Islam the American Civil War the Industrial Revolution the worst plague ever the abundance of hot springs in Japan the discovery of the germ theory the birth of advertising the development of the American hotel and much more Exploring the history of cleanliness is kind of like seeing the history of the world through a soap bubble MYTH 7 Keeping your body clean is healthy Not so Only one simple cleaning practice is important for your health And you’re going to have to read to the end of this book to find out what it is MYTH 8 Cleanliness is a nice polite subject Wrong again There’s a lot that’s gross about cleanliness If you’re squeamish be forewarned this book contains references to poop bodily fluids strong smells and other shocking subjects Have fun 7 Introduction Eight Myths About Clean
