History of Disgust

Norbert Elias’s The Civilizing Process traces modern standards of disgust and cleanliness to the development of court society during the Renaissance. Drawing on Elias, William Miller (Anatomy of Disgust) suggests sensitivity to disgust and being civilized are directly proportional.

Martha Nussbaum (Hiding from Humanity, 115-6) disagrees rather vigorously. Elias and Miller fail, in part, because their historical perspective is too short, which enables them to tell a Whiggish story about the triumph of clean over disgusting.

Nussbaum writes, “ancient Roman sanitary practices were in many respects well in advance of those that obtained in Great Britain until very close to the present day, if not now as well. The common Roman soldier stationed in Northumberland, in the north of England, among the most remote outposts of the empire, had a toilet seat to sit on below which flowed running water in which he might immerse his wiping sponge. Romans in major cities all had copious running water carried by aquifers whose engineering was remarkable, and the system separated water used for cooking and drinking from water used for toilet-flushing. . . . By contrast, courtiers in Elizabethan England urinated and defecated in corners of palaces, until the stench made it necessary to change residences for a time. And the weekly bath was the most English people of  all classes typically knew until extremely recent times.”

Cross-cultural comparison of modern societies leads to the same conclusion: “Indians of all classes wash with soap and water after defecating and find the institution of toilet paper in America and Europe substandard. (Similarly, the average toilet stall in Finland has a sink with a spray nozzle inside the stall, to promote such washing.) So we don’t seem to find a uniform advance in the direction of greater sensitivity to the bodily fluids.”