The Dirt on Clean: An Unsanitized History

By Katherine Ashenburg

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 Clean takes 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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: May 21, 2010
• ISBN: 9780307368362

Katherine Ashenburg

Katherine Ashenburg is the author of six books and many magazine and newspaper articles, including more than 100 travel articles for The New York Times. She has worked as an academic, a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation producer and the Arts and Books editor of the Globe and Mail. Her books include The Mourner’s Dance: What We Do When People Die (FSG, US; Knopf, Canada) and The Dirt on Clean: An Unsanitized History (FSG, US; Knopf, Canada; Profile Books, UK; plus multiple translation deals). The Dirt on Clean was chosen one of The Independent's Ten Best History Books of the year and one of the New York Public Library's 25 Best Books of the year. Her children’s edition of The Dirt on Clean, called All the Dirt: A History of Getting Clean (Annick Press, US and Canada; Sunest Publishing, Korea), won the 2018 Green Book Festival Award in the children’s category. Her bestselling debut novel, Sofie & Cecilia (Knopf, Canada), appeared in 2018.

Reviews for The Dirt on Clean

[eenerd · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A very interesting look into the evolution of personal and home hygene throughout history. Most fascinating (to me) was the difference in attitudes between keeping a body clean and keeping a room or building clean, and just the different ways that people have thought about this stuff and how they lived. The first 2/3 of the book was the best part, and as the author got closer to modern times it got less interesting to me. But overall pretty neat, even if I did just skim the last few chapters. Writing style is very readable, and the author is a good storyteller. Lots of cool tidbits and illustrations, as well.

[scrabblenut · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

More than you ever needed to know about human cleanliness (or lack thereof) through the ages. I found the first part of the book a bit tedious and repetitive, but the final 2 chapters about the 20th century are very interesting indeed.

[gbelik_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This seemed well researched and was full of interesting tidbits, but I had a bit too much of the subject of hygiene by the end.

[wyvernfriend · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An interesting look at washing practices over time, the war between enjoyment and practicality, warm washing and cold and the way that it has become an obsession with many people in the 20th century, while in the past it often echoed religious beliefs today it's very influenced by the new church of public opinion and advertising.It's interesting to read the different attitudes to clean over the ages and how in some places it remains the same, while many people now regard regular bathing important, there continues some people who hold on to older beliefs.Worth reading. Interesting.

[bkshs · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I loved this book. It temporarily fed the insatiable curiosity that I never quite grew out of. I'm the sort to stop suddenly while in the shower to wonder how the notions of indoor plumbing or soap came about. I'm always intrigued about how cultural systems and perspectives develop and how each is influenced by others.

The focus of this book is primarily Europe, and given the diverse practices even on that one continent, I think it would be hard to broaden the scope much further in one volume. Influences from other countries and consequent influences on North America are noted, but it's busy enough covering such a broad range of history, cultures, and geography. It describes the virtues or horrors (depending upon the place and time) of bathing in hot water, bathing in cold water, bathing in lukewarm water, or bathing at all, especially if it involved body parts that aren't generally seen. It brings up an interesting chicken-egg what-came-first musing for me: do clothing patterns determine bathing patterns or did bathing constraints determine clothing styles?

The book is full of interesting quotes, paintings, and ads. I tried to keep the various beliefs over time about the sanctity or fears of a full immersion bath in my head while browsing through an art museum yesterday. For some, to go without bathing was to show piety and humility. For others, bathing frequently was to show a desire for holiness and purity. Where heating water was an extravagant use of fuel and privacy was limited, bathing in cold water was not a comfortable thing. Perhaps it’s not surprising that bathing in comfortable temperatures was often believed to sap people of strength or make them slothful. In the days before central heating, the tendency to linger in a warm bath probably happened whenever the opportunity allowed, and I haven’t the slightest doubt that those immersed instead in frigid water jumped out quite energetically as soon as possible. Even so, stories of those who spent four to six hours at a time in warm baths were pretty mind-boggling. I can't help but think they had nothing better to do once out.

For many of us, cultural notions of hygiene were determined quite a lot by various marketing campaigns of the last century or two, punctuated here and there by war and disease outbreak. It’s a little jarring, but perhaps not surprising, that what’s now held to be good health and the minimum of manners was born out of ad campaigns between competing 19th and 20th century soap or deodorant manufacturers. Ultimately, there are still the questions: what’s really necessary for good health, respect for those around us, and our own enjoyment? The book doesn’t pretend to give the final word, but rather gives us how various societies chose to answer.

[wealhtheowwylfing · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I foolishly neglect to take notes while reading this book, so I don't have precise dates, hilarious anecdotes and strange factoids to share. However, all of those things can be found within these pages! Engagingly gossipy, with a clear organizational structure, this was an easy to read introduction to the very broad subject of hygiene. The book focuses mostly on Western Europe, with some side notes and comparison to the Middle East, northern Africa, the US, and a few others. Basically what I got out of this was that just as we are taught in schools, the Roman Empire was a shining moment of cleanliness. Before and after (once the infrastructure of the pipes started to crumble), Europeans were dirty, bathing maybe once a year, and the rest of the world was rather disgusted and astounded by them. Common misconceptions were that water weakened the skin's defenses against diseases, and that wearing clean linen, not water, was the safest and most efficacious method of staying clean. Washing ones hands, face and sometimes feet was often the most even a hoity-toity type would do. Eventually soap became easier to make, less smelly, and more effective, and sanitation too improved, and Europeans started bathing more often. The author discusses how what counts as "clean" has changed throughout the ages and varies by place, as well, and mentions that perceived dirtiness is often a method of denoting us-vs-them against immigrants, minority groups, etc.

[lynnb_64 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The Dirt on Clean traces the history of beliefs and practices surrounding personal hygiene. The author goes back to the ancient Greek and Roman times of public baths, and continues right up to today's obsessions with hand sanitizers, daily showers and white teeth.Beliefs have changed ... people once feared bathing more than we fear dirt. And standards of "clean enough" seem to be on an unending rise. The book is easy to read since it is written in a light style. The main discussion is interspersed with amusing (or gross) side bars or quotes. There is much here to provoke thought and a few chuckles along with way. Excellent.

[megglesmcgoo · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I enjoyed this easy read but I would have enjoyed it more if it dealt with more than just a Western perception of cleanliness. Having studied ancient, medieval and modern history there was little here that I was unaware of but the sources were well used and the author was not wide of the mark in her portrayal of any period that I am particularly knowledgeable about. The print in my edition seemed patronisingly large and text boxes with anecdotes in the middle of chapters annoy me but I enjoyed the incidental illustration throughout.

[bunnyjadwiga · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This popular history of cleanliness and its pursuit is high on my lists of books I had to buy. I raced through it at a breakneck speed while preparing my Complete Anachronist on Medieval Hygiene, and it nearly broke my spirit. The section on medieval hygiene was so good that I truly wondered whether there were any point in continuing my writing!However, this is a general popular history, and it does leave room for more scholarly and semi-scholarly work. In general, the text lacks footnotes, though there are references listed for the quotations in the back of the book. In addition, the sources for the marginalia are listed at the back, and the bibliography is extensive. The index is also excellent.Ashenburg does a good job with the Greek and Roman baths, as well as the early Christian conflict between standards of self-denial and reasonable cleanliness. She has the best general section on the mikveh in any of the books I consulted, though it is nowhere near the coverage in Judaism in Practice: From the Middle Ages Through the Early Modern edited by Lawrence Fine. Ashenburg does good work with the medieval, renaissance, and baroque periods, though her chronology is not always clear-- however, she's quite solid on the history of the bidet.The Dirt on Clean includes a goodly section on the modern development of cleaning standards, though I would say "Clean: A History" is better on some of the 19th c. Philosophy. Ashenburg's focus, however, is more American-- the Beecher sisters' The American Woman's Home is a key text for her. She also gives great attention to the post 1900 and especially post 1950 waves of demonization of the body and its smells. She makes great hay with Horace Miner's 1956 article "Body Ritual among the Nacirema," American Anthropologist, which in anthropological humor satirized our American grooming habits.Unfortunately, this may be the only flaw I see in the book. Ashenburg is clearly pushing a cause here, similar to that of the Hygiene Hypothesis: the idea that we'd all be healthier and more liberated if we worried less about dirt, germs and cleanliness than we do now. Not that I disagree with her, but she pushes her agenda hard enough that it will cast doubts on this work.The text is readable, full of useful snippets, and a lot of fun as well as educational. There's definitely a sense of "things you never knew, or thought you knew that were wrong" here. Lots of useful illustrations, as well as the marginalia, spice things up. I'd consider it a good purchase for libraries, too, though I think the reading level is at least high school.

[daverollins · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Very interesting history of attitudes to cleanliness since Roman times. A pity that it is limited to Europe and North America. My main quibble is that I found the print in the sidebars too small to be easily read.