Hygiene in World History

This book features a global, historical analysis of the changes and continuities in one of society’s basic functions: seeking to protect itself from disease.

Hygiene offers an important lens for major aspects of world and comparative history. The volume explores the ways different regions and major religions approached hygiene both before modern times and through the present with the more recent uses of germ theory. Topics in “premodern” hygiene include toilet practices, remarkably varied vi...