"For their part, Indians and Asians considered Westerners puzzlingly dirty. To some extent, it was a matter of merocrine sweat glands, which Caucasians have in profusion while Asians have few or none. (Because of this, they can still find even clean Westerners very smelly.) Partly it was that Christianity’s emphasis on the spirit encouraged a certain neglect and disparagement of the physical side of life, and Christian teachings, unlike those of Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam, ignored hygiene. And partly the difference between West and East was that much of Europe took a long hiatus when it came to regular washing, roughly from the late Middle Ages to the eighteenth or nineteenth century, and non Westerners who encountered Europeans in those centuries were often stunned by their abysmal hygiene."