Title The clean body : a modern history / Peter Ward

Published Montreal ; Kingston ; London ; Chicago : McGill-Queen's University Press, 2019

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Description 1 online resource (xi, 313 pages, 10 unnumbered pages of plates) : illustrations Contents Cleanliness as tradition. Before the deluge -- Cleanliness as habit. Public places, private spaces ; Clothes and their cleaning ; The soap trade and the new hygiene ; The educators -- Cleanliness as commodity. Bathrooms and bathing ; The laundry revolution ; Cleanliness and the beauty business -- Conclusion : Making the modern clean body Summary How often did our ancestors bathe? How often did they wash their clothes and change them? What did they understand cleanliness to be? Why have our hygienic habits changed so dramatically over time? In short, how have we come to be so clean? This book explores one of the most fundamental and pervasive cultural changes in Western history since the seventeenth century: the personal hygiene revolution. In the age of Louis XIV bathing was rare and hygiene was mainly a matter of wearing clean underclothes. By the late twentieth century frequent--often daily--bathing had become the norm and wearing freshly laundered clothing the general practice. Cleanliness, once simply a requirement for good health, became an essential element of beauty. Beneath this transformation lay a sea change in understandings, motives, ideologies, technologies, and practices, all of which shaped popular habits over time. The author explains that what began as an urban bourgeois phenomenon in the later eighteenth century became a universal condition by the end of the twentieth, touching young and old, rich and poor, city dwellers and country residents alike. Based on a wealth of sources in English, French, German, and Italian, this book surveys the great hygienic transformation that took place across Europe and North America over the course of four centuries. -- Provided by publisher Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index Notes Online resource; title from PDF title page (EBSCO, viewed September 26, 2019) Subject Hygiene -- Western countries -- History Laundry -- Western countries -- History Bathing customs -- Western countries -- History Baths -- history 49.40 personal hygiene (domestic science) Bathing customs Hygiene Laundry Hygiene Körperpflege Western countries Westliche Welt Genre/Form History Form Electronic book ISBN 9780228000631 0228000629 0228000637 9780228000624

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