Before Kansas was a red state, it was just plain dirty

(excerpt)- Fearful of germs, the authors suggest that students bathe "once or twice a week," perhaps in one of the free public baths that cities then provided. They dedicate one full chapter to denouncing flies, the source of Tennessee's typhoid-fever epidemic of 1898, and they recount the Boy Scouts' 1911 campaign to provide homemade swatters to every home in Kansas City. "Born in horse manure," the authors write, "the typhoid fly loves to wipe his feet on baby's bottle and the family cake."