There was a really interesting piece on J-STOR recently that washes away the widespread idea that the Middle Ages in Europe was just unbelievably filthy. Why is it that we think the Middle Ages WAS so dirty?
If you were a royal several hundred years ago, this might be a time when you’d pack up and leave the castle for one of your other castles, so the staff could clean out all the filth!
America once cherished a tradition of washing a week's worth of grimy manual labor off, layer by layer, in a foamy fury of soap and water. What happened? The entertainment of the 1970's, that's what.
