BY TERRI SCHLICHENMEYER
How many times a day do you wash your hands?
Let's add them up. An average of six to eight times in the
bathroom each 24-hour period.  Once before each meal,
that's 11.  Technically, while you're in the shower…
that's 12 times.
And probably once before bedtime.  So you wash your hands
around 13 times a day, give or take.
Which is 12 times more than your Middle-Ages ancestors did.
Five hundred years ago, your forebears might have washed their
grimy paws once a day, but a full-body immersion bath?  It
was all but unheard of.  You'll find further foul facts in
The Dirt on Clean by Katherine Ashenburg.
Taking a shower in the morning or a relaxing bubble bath in the
evening seems natural to us.  It's the rare (and shunned)
person who doesn't take personal hygiene to daily levels by
washing and using soap.
We, however, prefer to do it alone and without an audience,
unlike ancient Romans.  For them, bathing went
hand-in-lathered-hand with hearing local news and gossip.
Getting clean was a social experience enjoyed with friends and
neighbors in a public bathhouse, and it wasn't unusual for
wealthier Roman citizens to freshen up and catch up two or
three times every day. 
Although the popularity of bathhouses ran hot and cold through
the centuries, Ashenburg says that cities continued to furnish
them for citizens.  In the mid-14th century, though, such
places gained dirty reputations, possibly because of The Black
Death.
Although bathing would have been the right thing to do during a
time of rat-based flea-borne disease, European bathhouses were
forcibly closed.
Kind of gives new meaning to the phrase "You Dirty Rat,"
doesn't it?
Over the years, daily bathing went down the drain,  and
then bubbled back with society's approval.  Warm water,
although once deemed only for the sick or infirm, became a
must-have.  Showers, always available in one form or
another, gained favour. Soap slid onto store shelves, plumbing
poured into new homes, school curriculums promoted cleanliness,
and Madison Avenue presented B.O. and halitosis as (gasp!)
something that made one a social pariah.
But what about now? Is there such a thing as too much
sanitizing?
Every now and then, I like to read up about things that I
normally don't think about much.  The Dirt on Clean
reaches the (soap) bar quite nicely.
Ashenburg rubs the grime off the history of cleanliness in a
bubbly-light way by making a dull-as-dust subject sparkle.
In her opening words, Ashenburg repeats the question most asked
by people who learn that she's writing a book about bathing
(and the lack thereof) throughout the ages. I won't tell you
what the question is (you're probably asking it yourself) but
Ashenburg answers it and more in this fun book drenched with
abundant sidebars and a tubful of pictures.
If you've been scouring the bookshelves for something different
to read, this one dishes plenty of dirt for all.  Immerse
yourself into The Dirt on Clean this week.
Terri Schlichenmeyer writes book reviews for Northern Life.
