{"product_id":"clean-a-history-of-personal-hygiene-and-purity-9780199297795","title":"Clean: A History of Personal Hygiene and Purity","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn this pioneering book  Virginia Smith combines archeology  psychology  biology  and sociology to reveal how and why standards of cleanliness have come to exist today. Using hundreds of first-hand accounts and sources  Smith bring us from the Neolithic age to the present  peppering her engaging prose with enlightening and often surprising details.  Subconscious cleanliness has been with us since the first cell ejected a foreign invader. Even at the earliest stages of human development  our bodies produced pleasure-giving chemical opiates when things smelled or felt clean  inducing us to do things like bathing and removing dirty clothes. The need to be clean led directly to socialization  as we turned to our fellows for help with those hard to reach spots. In Eurasia during the Bronze Age  an emerging hierarchy of wealthy elites turned their love of grooming into an explosion of the cosmetic and luxury goods industry  greatly effecting the culture and economy of a vast area and leading to advances in chemistry and medicine. The history that follows  from Greece and Rome  where citizens focused much of their leisure time on perfecting  bathing  or just writing about the model athletic body  through Europe in the middle ages and the following centuries  is full of intriguing customs  convoluted treatises  and many reversals. Baths were good for you  baths were bad for you  baths were good again--but only if they were quite cold. Even the enlightened medical knowledge of modern times could not stop an onslaught of health remedies  treatments  spas  and New Age nature cures that were to follow. While today we are immeasurably closer--perhaps too close--to knowing just what \"clean\" means to our bodies  we are still just as far as we ever were on agreeing what it means to our souls. This engrossing and highly original work will introduce you to the customs and ideas of a myriad of cultures from centuries of human history. Not only will you gain a new perspective on the wonderful diversity of the world  but youll never look at your toothbrush the same way again.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45646949810229,"sku":"ByrdShop_0199297797","price":98.58,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780199297795.jpg?v=1781682999","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/clean-a-history-of-personal-hygiene-and-purity-9780199297795","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}