Print

Email story

Comment

Letter to the editor

The 'Dirt' on how humans cleaned up their act

Until modern times, dirt rarely begrimed our consciousness.

By Jules Wagman, Special to the Times
Published November 18, 2007

The Dirt on Clean: An Unsanitized History
By Katherine Ashenburg
North Point Press, 335 pages, $24 

- - -

In The Dirt on Clean, Katherine Ashenburg looks at dirt in Western civilization. She describes the bathing (and nonbathing) practices of the Greeks and Romans, the unwashed Middle Ages and today's lavish bathrooms, which evoke Rome at its gaudiest.

Dispelling one obvious question among clean freaks, Ashenburg, a journalist and lecturer, declares, "There's no evidence that the birth rate ever fell because people were too smelly for copulation."

The ancient Egyptians were fastidious in cleansing, anointing and perfuming themselves. The Greeks and Romans cleaned their bodies with a curved metal scraper called a strigil, then anointed themselves with olive oil.

Most ancient religions included ritual washing, but for reasons now buried with them, early Christians did not preach cleanliness. By the fifth century, being unwashed "became a uniquely Christian badge of holiness." Hermits and saints believed that only baptism was acceptable cleansing. St. Francis of Assisi "revered dirt and was said to have appeared after his death to compliment friars on their grubby cells." In the Middle Ages, dirt caked on the skin was believed to protect against the plague.

It wasn't until the 18th century that John Wesley, founder of Methodism, first preached that "cleanliness is next to Godliness." By the late 19th century, cleanliness began to take hold, and public baths appeared again in Western Europe and England. In the United States, Procter & Gamble developed a white soap. Sales manager Harley Procter found the perfect name in Psalm 45: "All thy garments smell like myrrh, and aloes, and cassia, out of the ivory palaces. . . ." When the Ivory soap machine was left on too long, the lather hardened into cakes that floated.

And so were born the modern advertising age and the age of cleanliness, linked inseparably.

Freelance writer Jules Wagman swims in the ocean as often as he can in Jacksonville.

[Last modified November 15, 2007, 16:24:50]