the body in water was a distinctly unhealthy, even dangerous thing. Clogging one’s pores with dirt and oil allegedly protected you from disease. “Bathing fills the head with vapors,” a French doctor advised in 1655. “It is the enemy of the nerves and ligaments, which it loosens, in such a way that many a man never suffers from gout except after bathing.” You can see the force of this prejudice most clearly in the accounts of royalty during the 1600s and 1700s—in other words, the very people who could afford to have baths constructed and drawn for them without a second thought. Elizabeth I
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