This chapter starts by tracing the modern historiography of hygiene from the Victorian period to the 1980s. It then discusses the prehistory of grooming, bathing, and pollution theory\; the social structures of grooming and house-cleaning from the mediaeval period to the Rennaissance\; the development of scholarly and popular European hygienic science from1500-1800\; the rise of health reform movements in the 19th century, and the cult of public hygiene and personal cleanliness in the 20th century.\