Virginia Smith . Clean: A History of Personal Hygiene and Purity . New York : Oxford University Press . 2007 . Pp. viii, 457. $30.00.

Abstract

Who wants to read a book about being clean? Anyone interested in history of the body, of medicine, of public health, social history, or health fads, to name a few. In her survey of cleanliness, hygiene, and purity, Virginia Smith covers a lot of ground. An expansion of her dissertation both physically and temporally, her study examines grooming, exercise, diet, religion, and the social implications of the same from ancient Egypt to the present. The scope of this book could be daunting to the casual reader, moving as it does from bodily cleaning on the cellular level to sewage removal and eighteen-seat latrines, from philosophical behavior to the religiously inspired. Smith's writing jumps across time seamlessly, even if the connections are not always obvious. I do not doubt that there are differences between social classes when it comes to keeping clean and grooming, but are there differences between Western and Eastern cultures? In this examination, the focus is firmly a European one, making global assertions hard to substantiate.