CLEAN AND DECENT Wright, Lawrence (HISTORIA DEL W.C)

CLEAN AND DECENT  Wright, Lawrence (HISTORIA DEL W.C)

Idioma: English

Editorial: Routledge & Kegan (London)

1963

14,50x22,50 cm.

282 páginas. Tapas duras con sobrecubierta. Numerosas ilustraciones. Firma. Buen estado.

The fascinating history of the bathroom and the Water closet and of sundry habits, fashions & accessories of the toilet principally in Great Britain, France, & America.

"Clean and decent", says the author's Preface "is meant to entertain, even if scholarship does keep breaking through" It is indeed fascinating; sometimes astonishing. Who would have supposed that the Romans had lagged hot-water cylinders? that Queen Elizabeth I had cushions in his bath? that baths have been concealed in sofas, and washbasins in pianos? that whisky may be added to the bathwater, but that mutton chops should not be eaten in the bath?that the shower-bath calls for a hat, and can cause asphyxia? that sponges have sex? It seems that more is to be learned about past peoples from their bath-rooms than from their bath-rooms than from their battlefields; patterns of social history are mirrored in the bathwater, of found locked in the water-closet. "To the historian", says Siegfried Giedion, "there are no banal things".