13th May 2010
Doors at 6 pm, Talk commences at 7 pm
Clean – Dr Virginia Smith will explore the global history of human body-care, from pre-historic grooming rituals to New Age medicine, from medieval ascetics to 21st century cosmetics. Why do children (and their parents) still experience the annoyance of having nits? What exactly are 'purity rules'? And why have the rituals of bathtime scarcely changed in two hundred years?
Virginia Smith is an honorary fellow of the Centre for History in Public Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and is working on an oral history project entitled Grooming and Health beliefs: modern personal hygiene 1945 to 2007. She was previously a Fellow of the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine. Her latest book "clean: a history of personal hygiene and purity" is published by Oxford University Press
Talk at 11 Mare Street - please click here to buy tickets
