Description
Book SynopsisHow vermin went from being part of everyone's life to a mark of disease, filth, and lower status. For most of our time on this planet, vermin were considered humanity's common inheritance. Fleas, lice, bedbugs, and rats were universal scourges, as pervasive as hunger or cold, at home in both palaces and hovels. But with the spread of microscopic close-ups of these creatures, the beginnings of sanitary standards, and the rising belief that cleanliness equaled class, vermin began to provide a way to scratch a different itch: the need to feel superior, and to justify the exploitation of those pronounced ethnicallyand entomologicallyinferior. In Getting Under Our Skin, Lisa T. Sarasohn tells the fascinating story of how vermin came to signify the individuals and classes that society impugns and ostracizes. How did these creatures go from annoyance to social stigma? And how did people thought verminous become considered almost a species of vermin themselves? Focusing on Great Britain and
Table of ContentsIntroduction: Getting Under Our Skins: Vermin in History
1. "That Nauseous Venomous Insect": Bed Bugs in Early Modern Britain
2. Bed Bugs Creeping Through Modern Times
3. Praying Lice: Creeping into Religion, Science and Sexuality
4. Lousy Societies: Infesting the Lower Classes and Foreigners
5. THe Perils of Lice in the Modern World
6. The Flea in Humanity's Ear
7. Modern Fleas: Literal and Linguistic Weapons
8. Attacking Rodents: Rats in Early Modern Times
9. The Two Cultures of Rats: 1800-2020
Conclusion: The Power of Vermin
