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Personal Hygiene Essay

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Personal hygiene is a major part of your everyday life. It includes brushing your teeth, taking a shower, applying deodorant, wearing clean clothes, cooking your food properly, and washing your hands when necessary. There are many different types of hygiene and different ways of doing them. The types of hygiene are food and cooking hygiene, medical hygiene, and personal hygiene, there is even such a thing as excessive hygiene. Excessive hygiene may cause allergic diseases. Some parts of the body like the ear canal, or inside of the vagina are mostly better left alone for the body's own cleaning systems. Also, excessive application of soaps, creams, and ointments can adversely affect certain of the body's natural processes. For example, …show more content…

The history of personal hygiene goes back centuries even millenniums. Some cultures performed personal hygiene for religious purposes such as the Hindu’s. They believed that if you did not bath that it was a sin. They were based on ritual purity and were not informed by an understanding of the causes of diseases and their means of transmission. Regular bathing was a trademark of Roman civilization. They constructed elaborate baths in urban areas to serve the public. They baths were like very large swimming pools. Their entire bathing building consisted of a variety of bathing choices. First the large swimming pool like baths. Then smaller cold and hot pools, and saunas, and spa-like facilities where people could be oiled and massaged. The water was constantly changed by and aqueduct system. The Romans also had an elaborate sewage system called Cloaca Maxima. The Romans didn’t have a flushing toilet either, but most of them had running water right under them. Until the late 19th Century, only the best in Western cities typically had indoor facilities for relieving waste. The poorer majority used community facilities built above cesspools in backyards and courtyards. This changed after Dr. John Snow discovered that cholera was transmitted by the fecal contamination of water. Though it took decades for his discovery to gain acceptance, governments and sanitary reformers were eventually convinced of the health benefits of

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