Sweet and Clean?

<em>Sweet and Clean?</em> challenges the widely held beliefs on bathing and cleanliness in the past. For over thirty years the work of the French historian George Vigarello has been hugely influential on early modern European social history describing an aversion to water and bathing and the use<br>of linen underwear as the sole cleaning agent for the body. However these concepts do not apply to early modern England. <em>Sweet and Clean?</em> analyses etiquette and medical literature revealing repeated recommendations to wash or bathe in order to clean the skin. Clean linen was essential for<br>propriety but advice from medical experts was contradictory. Many doctors were convinced that it prevented the spread of contagious diseases but others recommended flannel for undergarments and a few thought changing a fever patient's linens was dangerous. The methodology of material culture<br>helps determine if and how this advice was practiced. Evidence from inventories household accounts and manuals and surviving linen garments tracks underwear through its life-cycle of production making wearing laundering and final recycling. Although the material culture of washing bodies is<br>much sparser other sources such as the Old Bailey records paint a more accurate picture of cleanliness in early modern England than has been previously described. The contrasting analyses of linen and bodies reveal what histories material culture best serves. Finally what of the<br>diseases-plague smallpox and typhus-that cleanliness of body and clothes were thought to prevent? Did following early modern medical advice protect people from these illnesses?<br>