Tag: pathogens

Killing the Irish: The Great Potato Famine 

RilalyLeave a comment

When The Great Potato Famine was over in 1852, one million people in Ireland were dead. Most of them were dead from the long, slow, and torturous death of starvation and the epidemics that followed. Roughly 1.5 million Irish residents watched their loved ones, friends, and fellow countrymen die in this manner, and they left, convinced the course their country was on would be irreversible. In those seven years, 1845-1852, twenty percent of Ireland’s 8.175 million people were simply gone, and famine scholars declare it one of the most severe famines of the modern era when measured by mortality rate. It devastated Ireland to such a degree that some argue it took generations for it to “recover” in a relative sense. And according to my stepdad, I compounded our mother country’s tragedy by missing a question about it on a World History test.

“You didn’t even know it happened?” he asked. “It was the worst thing that ever happened to our people, and we probably wouldn’t be here if our ancestors weren’t one of the lucky few to get out.”  

“I’m sorry, but it was just so boring,” I said. “The whole subject of World History is just one long bore.” This further outraged my stepdad, and the fact that I still bring this exchange up shows that I still feel some shame. I feel better about it now, decades later, because I think about the ‘just the facts’ style of writing that occurs in World History textbooks. I understand that a comprehensive collection of the history of man requires a facts first presentation that complies with standards and curriculum, but the core of the word history is story. I think it would be a great idea for the team that puts History textbooks together to commission some creative writers to take the data and create a compelling narrative. I know my history now, because I’ve read some incredibly talented authors who wrote compelling books on the same material, and I’ve listened to podcasters who know how to bring history alive. We didn’t learn World History in the classes I took in high school. We memorized names and dates.

“What was the question you missed?” my stepdad asked after he cooled off a bit.

“It was something along the lines of, ‘This almost destroyed the country of Ireland.’ I guessed revolution, as in Oliver Cromwell, and all that.”

“It wasn’t Cromwell, it was a damned fungus eating up Ireland’s potatoes.” 

It wasn’t a microscopic fungus that brought Ireland down. It was Phytophthora infestans—an oomycete, a water mold more closely related to algae than to true fungi.

A biology teacher once told us, “All fungal pathogens are fungi, but not all fungi are pathogens.” What did he say? A guy can’t say that once, and we’re all like, “Okay, got it. Interesting.” We need it repeated and broken down. The distinction sounds like one without a difference, like hair-splitting until you learned what it cost. That distinction, as it turned out, could’ve been everything to Irish potato farmers of 1845, but they only knew the first half of my biology teacher’s description, “All fungal pathogens are fungi.” After suffering the initial blight brought forth by this pathogen, Irish farmers turned to 19th century botanists for advice on how to fight fungi. They followed the botanist’s advice by burning their fields, sprinkling lime, and using sulfur compounds to destroy their harvest to prepare for the next, fungi free one. None of it worked, because fungicides do not reliably kill oomycetes, and that was the distinction. 

The Great Potato Famine was caused by the phytophthora infestans, a microscopic organism more closely related to algae than true fungi. This tiny organism is called an oomycete, which is a water-mold. The idea that it was a water-mold played a direct role in prolonging the famine, because the 19th century botanists believed that that which ravaged the fields of Ireland was a dry-loving fungus, and they advised the Irish farmers to follow these measures to deprive the fungi of humidity, because humidity feeds a fungus. Water‑molds, such as the phytophthora infestans thrive in wet conditions, so the botanist’s advice proved worse than useless. Yet, modern investigations state that even if the botanists correctly diagnosed the pathogen, and Irish farmers followed their advice to the letter, this nation-wide blight probably would’ve happened anyway. It probably would’ve happened anyway because Ireland’s cool, wet, and humid climate produced long periods of leaf wetness that didn’t just allow the potato blight to spread; it supercharged it and made the resultant disease almost unstoppable. 

One million deaths is difficult to grasp, and it’s just as difficult to confirm, because Ireland lacked comprehensive civil registration of deaths at the time. The scholarly estimates are anywhere between 800,000 and 1.5 million, with one million being the central consensus figure. One million is also a round number, and round numbers roll off the tongue so easily that they require perspective. The island nation Fiji, Djibouti, Cyprus, and the Soloman Islands all have populations of roughly one million residents. Fort Worth, Texas, the tenth largest population of the United States has a population of roughly one million citizens. Imagine reading that the entire population of Fort Worth, or Fiji or Djibouti suffered the slow, agonizing death of starvation. 

The Great Potato Famine didn’t damage Ireland, it destroyed it, as evidenced by the fact that Ireland’s population was 8.18 million in the 1841 census, 4.2 million in the late 1920s, and 5.35 million in 2026. These more modern numbers include normal migration patterns, and non-famine related issues, but the point is that when a microscopic organism appeared in Ireland, in September 1845, it destroyed a country to the point that it has never fully recovered.  

The Horror Story 

Another reason I think I missed that question about the potato famine on my World History test was that my people, the Irish, love to tell stories. Ireland has produced some of the most influential storytellers in world literature, and I experienced that love of storytelling in my inner circle. One of primary elements a great storyteller needs is a big bad guy to whom we can all focus our anger, and The Great Potato Famine didn’t really have one. At some point in the grapevine storytelling I heard, a big, bad guy of history, named Oliver Cromwell, made his way into the oral history of The Great Potato Famine. Their “based on a true story” tale suggested that Oliver Cromwell somehow commandeered The Great Potato Famine to destroy Ireland. Only problem is Cromwell was born on the cusp of the 17th Century, and he ruled England and destroyed Ireland 200 years prior to The Great Potato Famine. Now, I’m sure the O.C. would’ve shed no tears over the devastation wrought upon my ancestors in the 19th Century, but he had nothing to do with it. 

The Great Potato Famine was the result of an ecological accident amplified by the climate of Ireland and the country’s agricultural reliance on the potato. Yet, with different administrative policies the Brits could’ve prevented that natural disaster from turning into a catastrophe. It is believed that this whole mess began when ships from the Americas brought the phytophthora infestans to the ports of Europe. Some speculate that those ships first landed in Belgium ports, but it soon became irrelevant what exact port introduced the pathogen to Europe as it began reproducing at such a rapid rate that it spread throughout Europe causing some destruction along the way. It wasn’t until phytophthora infestans made its way to the cool, humid weather of Ireland that it experienced what historians call a reproductive explosion. 

When Irish farmers planted their potatoes in their normal course of a day, the phytophthora infestans fed off the potato blackening them, liquefying their insides, and leaving them rotted in the ground within days. This, of course, didn’t just ruin some fields, or some portions of the fields. It resulted in a nationwide agricultural collapse of the potato; a vegetable Ireland was too dependent upon.

The population of Ireland was so reliant on the potato that parts of the Irish population experienced almost immediate mass starvation, disease, and death. It was a famine driven by famine-related epidemics: typhus, cholera, dysentery, and tuberculosis that drove Ireland’s mortality figures higher. As high as the death rate was, historians suggest that there was such a wide range of deaths that could’ve been related to the famine that precise counting of actual deaths due to starvation was nearly impossible. Many deaths also went unrecorded, especially in rural districts where entire families perished. One day those isolated, rural homes housed father, mother, daughter, and son families, and the next day those houses rotted with corpses in them, and no one checked in on them for years.

Saving the Bloodline 

The World History textbook’s summation of why I exist is that my ancestor, we’ll call him Patrick, witnessed the utter devastation occurring in his homeland, and he left. Patrick packed his bags, walked to the nearest port, jumped on a ship, and made his way to America. End of story. That’s why I’m here today. Horray!

Again, I sympathize with the textbook’s writers need to summarize the history of man, but the textbook version leaves out the harrowing details of the story of Patrick’s travel to America, as illustrated by letters Irish emigrants, who made similar journeys. First, Patrick didn’t just wake up one day and say, “I’m outta here!” This was an agonizing decision that impacted everyone Patrick loved and the rest of his life. Patrick grew up on a family farm, and if you know anything about farmers, you know they don’t give up after a bad year, harsh years, or even punishing cycles. Their difficult lives are such that preparing for the worst of the worst is a part of their daily lives, and leaving the family farm isn’t a last resort; it isn’t even a consideration. For someone to leave a family farm, they must receive incontrovertible proof that they are going to die and end the bloodline with him if they stay. 

By the time Patrick finally decided to leave the family farm, starvation and sickness weakened him. Those who were still alive on Patrick’s family farm were ravaged by starvation and disease. His disease-ridden sister, the dying father he revered as a role model, the mother who had sacrificed her own well-being for his happiness, the grandparents he expected to be dead before he reached America were all torn. They urged him to leave so the bloodline might survive, yet they were terrified of what would happen once the last able-bodied member of the family walked away. They all urged him to leave, but that didn’t mean leaving everyone he loved his whole life wasn’t the most difficult decision this young twenty-something had to make.

If Patrick had any money, and most of Irish emigrants didn’t, he probably had just enough to board a ship out of Ireland. He didn’t have enough money for food purchases along the way, so he likely carried some bread and cornmeal for a day or two of some nourishment along the way. He also may have traveled with a change of clothes, but that’s about it.

If he walked the average 3.2 miles an hour, it probably took him nine and a half hours to walk from the parish of Callan in Kilkenny County to Waterford, the nearest major port. Considering all the information of this route, in 1845, we can estimate that it was likely a multi-day journey for Patrick. 

What Patrick witnessed on this perilous journey comes from letters written by Irish emigrants to America, Kilkenny Poor Law Union reports, and Waterford eyewitness accounts. He would’ve walked alongside “Walking skeletons” assuming he wasn’t one himself, children with swollen legs from edema, adults whose clothes hung off them “like rags on a stick” and people too weak to stand, lying in doorways. 

Patrick witnessed so much death and sadness that it broke his heart to turn away from families with small children, desperately crying out for a small portion of whatever money, bread, or cornmeal he carried on his shoulders. Patrick also witnessed the worst of humanity, as starving parents resorted to violence to feed their children. “These people were not villains,” a Kilkenny relief officer later wrote to characterize what he saw. “They were starving.” 

When Patrick survived the walk and managed to avoid the violent thieves and those so desperate that violence and murder were a means of survival, he probably walked up to the port of Waterford with just enough money to board the ship. The sight of the ship must have appeared momentarily glorious, as it stood as a symbol of his ability to survive the walk with the necessary money. That relief was short lived when he saw the dilapidated conditions of the ship before him, one that he knew would take anywhere from six to twelve weeks to complete the transatlantic voyage. Patrick knew that the mortality rates on the worst of these ships was between 20% to 30%, because priests read letters to their parishioners from survivors of those voyages. If he didn’t hear those letters on Sundays, he read them in the Irish newspapers. By the time Patrick spotted his vessel to freedom, he probably heard the “coffin ships” characterization of these ships hundreds of times.

Most of these “coffin ships” were almost criminally overcrowded, almost criminally ill-equipped for long transatlantic crossings, ridden with the famine-related diseases, and worked by inexperienced crews who hated the Irish. As daunting as all that was, Patrick also knew that –depending on the quality of the ship he was lucky to board— the ship might take twelve weeks to complete the transatlantic voyage. 

Once Patrick survived the overwhelming odds of making the travel from Kilkenny County, Ireland to a port in America, likely New York, specifically Castle Garden –the main immigrant receiving station before Ellis Island—Patrick was not greeted with open arms. He was exhausted, malnourished, and confused, but finally seeing Castle Garden filled him with tears of joy and hope. The realization struck him that he not only survived one of the worst famines in human history, but a journey that killed tens of thousands, based on eyewitness accounts, and emigration records, and historians’ estimates on the path from Kilkenny County to New York.

 

When Patrick disembarked, he kissed the ground and almost immediately stepped into a port that in the 1840s–1850s was one of the most dangerous places an Irish immigrant could arrive. Patrick saw luggage stolen right off the dock and other forms of petty theft. He would’ve been shoved and threatened by the throng on the shore and fellow travelers, and he would’ve seen children separated from the parents in the chaos. “They tore my bundle from my hands, and I never saw it again,” one woman wrote home to Ireland.  

Then, once he survived all that, he saw “No Irish Need Apply” signs in windows of factories and other workplaces. He later experienced Anti-Catholic violence, including church burnings, stereotyping that depicted Irish as lazy, drunk, criminal, or inferior in general, and Patrick faced political exclusion, with efforts to block Irish voting rights. And this didn’t just last as long as it took for the one million immigrants from Ireland to settle into their country, as some historical accounts suggest this many Irish immigrants experienced varying degrees of hatred that Irish lasted from Patrick’s arrival in America, in or around 1847, to the early 1900s, depending on the region they eventually called home. So, if Patrick was a twenty-two-year-old when he arrived in New York, he may have experienced intense discrimination in America for the rest of his life. But he did it.

He Did It

Patrick beat the odds by surviving the long perilous journey from Kilkenny County Ireland to America, and whatever joy he felt was surely dispelled by those he left behind, but he had no choice. I’m the reason Patrick, and his immediate family, made those painful sacrifices and tough choices, and they are the reason I’m here today, living in the greatest country in the history of man. How do you repay that? We’re fortunate to be here and alive, no doubt, but how do you appreciate it?

If there is an afterlife, and that afterlife has a screening room where we can view the painful sacrifices, tough choices, death-defying incidents, improbable survival of illnesses, and anything and everything the Patricks of our ancestry had to survive for as long as it took to have a child, I think we would all realize that it’s not just luck, though luck played a huge role, but it’s so far beyond luck that it’s almost an accident. Every person alive today has their ancestors to thank for the unbroken chain of good decisions, narrow escapes, and sheer chance for their life, but most of all they have good luck to thank.

My guess is Patrick’s tale was far more harrowing than I could possibly report. The horror he experienced lay in the details of the death-defying moments he experienced, and everything else he witnessed. We can also guess that when he finally settled down, Patrick probably found it difficult to smile or laugh in the aftermath. All things considered, he probably found the rest of his life unrewarding. Unless, Patrick saw it as his mission to live, survive, and thrive for those who made it possible for him to leave Ireland and pave the way for those of us who existed because of him. It was probably difficult for him to enjoy small talk, going to the beach, or any of the other useless things we do to relax when we’re not working, but if he learned how to use the opportunity they gave him, Patrick could show everyone, including himself, that they made the right choice.

How do we properly appreciate the gift of life? It’s such an overwhelming idea that we’ll never be able to find a fully adequate answer, so why try? Decades after missing that question on that World History test, I’ve found is to use the gift others bestowed upon me by doing what I do best; learning the story, researching it ad nauseum, and writing an article about it. It’s what I do, but in the course of doing it, I found another form of appreciation that might be more affirming to everything Patrick did to make sure I saw life, and that is reversing my decades old characterization of Patrick’s plight and The Great Potato Famine’s blight as boring.

I’m Disgusting, He’s Disgusting, She’s Disgusting, Wouldn’t You Like to be Disgusting Too?

RilalyLeave a comment

I considered the national obsession with hygiene a well-played, well-timed joke that we were all in on, until I witnessed two grown men form a friendship based on shared demands for hygienic excellence. In their conversation, they set up a standard of behavioral traits intended to define them as the next step in the evolutionary process that they believed might place them in a pseudo superman, or Übermensch, status beyond the inferior, basic hygiene practices of the common man and woman. I considered their hygienic standard so high that I thought they were exaggerating it for humorous effect. By the time their bond was sealed, however, I realized that this newfound friendship was based not only on respect for the other’s demands for excellence in this regard, but for their hygienic superiority.

I loved the brilliant television show Seinfeld as much as anyone else. I found the main character’s obsessive demands for hygienic excellence so funny that when these two friends of mine began the list of requirements they had for their fellow man an impulsive laugh escaped me. After spending so many years laughing at Seinfeld’s obsessive quirks, my laughter was almost a conditioned reflex, but they weren’t laughing. They had smiles on their faces, but the smiles they shared were not of a sly variety that concealed a clever joke. Rather, they were kind, appreciative smiles, and a recognition that they finally found a likeminded soul in one another.

In the space normally reserved for laughter, they further detailed how the common hygienic habits of their fellow man were gross, and they both agreed that one particular person, our mutual acquaintance, was emblematic of those common habits. Without saying these exact words, they suggested he deserved all the shame that persons of modernity should cast upon him. I spoke with the two men separately a number of times, and they were well versed in the cultural norms, the belief that all men and women are created equal and we should accord them a degree of respect we require of them–unless, apparently, that person decides to leave the bathroom without washing their hands.

The implicit suggestion nestled within this discussion was that as the representative of one with common hygienic practices, I was supposed to recognize that I was gross and completely disgusting, and if I had any designs on becoming friends with either of them, I would have to seriously up my hygienic practices. I was to fear adding input into their conversation for that that might lead to an examination of my hygienic practices and a revelation that my habits were closer to our mutual friend’s than I ever knew. We might also find that what I considered an acceptable hygienic standard to be so disgusting and gross as to be worthy of some sort of public flogging in the public square to set an example for anyone else who might consider basic hygienic standards acceptable.

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“If you’re disgusting and you know it, clap your hands,” is the ostensible mantra of a major news network website that a number of my co-workers visit on a daily basis. The overarching milieu of this site is news, but the regular visitors of the site that I know are aware of little to nothing of the news of the day. Yet, they always have some nugget of information about how we can all improve our hygienic standard of living a little.

“Your kitchen counter is covered with more germs than your floor,” one of my co-workers said when he approached our lunchroom table. “Your dishrags and sponges are cesspools. Using them on a continual basis doesn’t rid your kitchen of germs. It only spreads them around.”

The idea that this particular purveyor of hygienic knowledge was male did not strike me as odd because I considered it less than macho to be hygienic, but he was the first man I met who would prove so obsessed with it. His warning would prove to be the first of many signposts to signal that the obsession I once believed indigenous to the female demographic had now crossed income brackets, social stratifications, and genders.

“Install a lighter-colored counter-top so you can see germs better.”

“Stainless steel is the best defense against the spread of germs.”

“The most germ-ridden room in most homes is the kitchen. Your cutting board can contain up to 200 times more fecal bacteria than your toilet seat.”

“Your fingertips can spread more germs than any tool in your kitchen.” 

The best way to avoid germs, it appears, is to avoid the kitchen, the bathroom, and your fingertips. They’re gross! The bathroom is obvious, but what about your bedroom? Furthermore, if you have any thoughts of going into the basement, you might want to consider investing in a gas mask and a Tyvek suit with hood and boots. Your basement is a cesspool teeming with pathogens no one can pronounce! It’s gross! Disinfect everything! Sanitize! Sterilize! We need more government research on this matter! We could get sick! We could die!

Our mothers taught us that the best way to avoid pathogens is to clean, but modern scientific research dictates that cleaning might be nothing more than a good start. Our mother didn’t know that the optimal way to avoid germs is to religiously and fastidiously clean the cleaning products to the point of sterilization. She used the same sponge and dishrag for more than a week without dipping it into a solution that contained one part bleach to nine parts warm water, and she used the same cleaning products for more than one task with no knowledge of cross contaminants. She didn’t know. 

CBS News reports, “If you’re cleaning up appliances, counter- tops, tables, etc., it’s almost mandatory that you use different cleaning agents. There should be different designated sponges for each function. After you clean up the debris from the meat carcass, place your sponge in this cleaning solution for about a minute or so. That will kill all the potential pathogens.”[1] 

Mom didn’t know.

Mom didn’t consider the idea of placing an industrial air shower to divide the kitchen from the rest of the house, because she was born in a generation that didn’t know anything about these hygienic standards of excellence. She might not have considered putting an industrial-strength anti-radiation shower in her kitchen for the sake of better health practices and greater avoidance of accidental pollination by pathogens. Mom didn’t have the information we do today, so how can we blame her? She didn’t know that it’s best to stay out of the kitchen altogether. Her generation wasn’t privy to the kind of scientific research that discovered that it’s probably safer to stay out of the house, unless that means going outside. The dangers inherent in leaving the house are so obvious that it’s not even worth exploring. We all know that the air outside is just teaming with pathogens, but our mom allegedly had no idea about this. She might have thought it was safe to send us outside to play, but she didn’t have the ubiquitous news sites clamoring for clicks, or the search engines that provide the latest tidbits of science in proper hygiene.

One of the worst conversations the creators of the Seinfeld show, Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David, brought to American life involved this obsessive level of hygiene. Conversations about hygiene occurred before the Seinfeld mindset began invading our culture and corporations began adding antibacterial agents to our soaps and body washes, but in the aftermath of that great show, it seems that every fifth conversation we hear now involves some form of obsession over cleanliness. We all thought Seinfeld’s obsessions were hilarious, but we had no idea how influential this mindset would prove to be. People now claim, with pride, that they don’t just wash their hands. They use a paper towel to open the bathroom door. “Oh, I know it,” the sympathetic listener proclaims with pride, “that handle is gross!”

No one has a problem with better practices that aim for cleanliness or those that strive for greater hygienic practices, but some, like my two friends, are so obsessed with it that they tip the scale of hygienic standards discussions toward superiority versus inferiority. When they spoke of our mutual acquaintance, the hygienic heretic, their disdain for him sealed whatever bond they needed to declare a friendship based on some kind of perverse superiority they felt regarding the man’s inferior habits.

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A Psychology Today (PT) by Rachel Herz piece details this perversity, stating that some obsessives even avoid shopping carts that have crumpled paper in them.[2] Why do they avoid those shopping carts, because they’re gross? A crumpled piece of paper is evidence that someone else used the shopping cart, at some point, since its creation. We know someone has used this cart before, of course, yet we regard visible evidence of it repellent. Supermarket and department store chains throughout the country have addressed this concern by putting antiseptic wet wipes near the shopping cart area, but that does not address the trauma of spotting a crumpled store ad in a cart. The only remedy for that is selecting another cart, but why should we be forced to select another cart? Why doesn’t someone address our concerns better? It would be one thing if the cart was home to a soiled piece of tissue paper, but what crime against humanity did the crumpled store ad commit? It’s evidence of other people, germs, pathogens, and a general lack of uncleanliness on the part of the store. It also initiates in us, “a desire to keep that which is outside from getting in.”

An interesting note about the emotion of disgust that Ms. Herz adds is that it’s both learned and selective. If a hygienic person with obsessive characteristics happens to see the person who left the crumpled ad in the cart and they find that person somewhat attractive, the potential cart user will not be as disgusted by the crumpled ad and the subsequent use of that cart. If they judge that previous cart borrower to be gorgeous, they will be even less disgusted. To take this idea to its logical conclusion, if the hygienic person with obsessive tendencies sees that the previous cart user was an attractive celebrity, that customer may feel privileged to use the cart regardless the celebrity’s hygienic practices. They might even save the crumpled ad and brag to their friends and family that the gorgeous celebrity touched it. If the previous cart user was somewhat overweight or of foreign descent, however, customers are more apt to select another cart, regardless that person’s hygienic standards.

Those who engage in obsessive hygienic practices also tend to be less inclined to be friends with those with physical disabilities, for images of frailty or illness lead us to avoid having anything to do with that person.

If those obsessed with hygienic practices had someone force them to share a toothbrush with someone, they would be more inclined to share it with a relative, rather than the mailman. This makes sense, because we are more familiar with our family members, and we assume we share some of their immunities.

What doesn’t make as much sense to those who believe their disgust has philosophical purity is the decision-making process that concerns those outside our immediate realm. We view our boss, for example, as a stranger who exists outside our immediate realm. We may interact with our boss daily, but this is not with the same level of intimacy we share with relatives. Our natural inclination is to place that boss below our family members, but the study also suggests we place our boss below the weatherman on the list of people with whom we would forcibly share a toothbrush. If our overriding concern were hygiene, why would we prefer to share a toothbrush with a weatherman we’ve never met to a boss we interact with on a regular basis? A weatherman is often better looking. The weatherman is often better-looking, clean cut, and better dressed. Moreover, there’s a greater possibility that we personally dislike our boss.

“Our attraction toward someone,” the Herz writes, “can override our qualms about sharing body fluids.”

There is one point of inconsistency in the PT article: “Those who avoid objects touched by strangers report fewer colds, stomach bugs, and other infectious ailments,” it states in one place, yet in another it offers, “Exposure to benign bacteria stimulates the immune system so that it is better able to fight bad bacteria.” Perhaps the explanation resides in the word “benign,” but other than that, the two purported facts appear to be contradictory.

The Origin of Disgust

Contrary to internet myths and our own preconceived notions on the subject, disgust is not an innate emotion based on self-preservation. Disgust is, rather, a learned behavior that we learn more about every day, exacerbated by every news report and website we read. Despite the fact that a baby might twist up his face in disgust when force-fed strained squash, his expression does not have a direct link to disgust. Studies suggest that the baby doesn’t really know disgust until they’re 3 years old. “If we were to make a look of disgust to a baby, say when we take out the garbage,” Rachel Herz writes, “the infant is more apt to think we’re mad at them for something than to associate the look with disgust, until they’re three years old.”

This is why babies have no problem eating whatever they find on the floor. It is also why they have no problem crawling through what we consider disgusting debris. They have no understanding of what they should find disgusting and what is not, no matter how often we tell them. It’s the reason my brother and his wife had to keep my nephew away from the dog dish, because he didn’t recognize the difference between the liquid his parents served him in a bottle, and the liquid we place in the dog’s dish.

“Even after we achieve three years of age,” Herz writes, “we don’t have a total understanding of disgust. It is the most advanced human emotion that requires reasoning, thought, and deduction. Humans are the lone animal with a brain advanced enough to process the complexity of disgust, and that knowledge occurs with experience and over time. It is also something we learn more and more about every day, and we get more and more grossed out by what could be deduced as minimal when it comes to actual infection.” 

Those of us who used to think exaggerated obsession with hygiene was nothing more than a brilliant characterization and one of the best recurring jokes to support that joke, now know how wrong we were. We’ve learned that these characteristics can aid in the pursuit of psychological dominance, and they can form friendships with fellow travelers on the road to hygienic excellence.

“You’re all just silly,” I told the two men that formed a friendship based on their hygienic standard. “You’re obsessed with all this.”

“Hey, better safe than sorry,” one of them said. I received that response before from the obsessed, so I expected it. I didn’t expect him to expound on that typical response, “If more people were as obsessed as I am, as you say, I wouldn’t have to be the way I am.”

“I guess,” I’ve responded, “but you do recognize that all these reports about pathogens and sterilizing sponges and counter-tops hit home with some people, until they’re afraid to enter their homes or anyone else’s or go outside. I don’t know anyone who takes all these reports seriously, to the point of adjusting their habits accordingly, but I’m sure there are some. If you met such a person, wouldn’t you consider them silly?”

“Well, yes and no.”

I was disgusting and I didn’t know it, until I met these two. I knew I wasn’t disgusting, but group thought can be difficult to thwart when the one in the minority hasn’t studied the subject in question. The idea that these two men were extreme was not lost on me, of course, but I needed an extreme from the other pole to counterbalance their subtle condemnations. For that, I turned to comedian George Carlin:

“I never take any precautions against germs. I don’t shy away from people who sneeze and cough. I don’t wipe off the telephone, I don’t cover the toilet seat, and if I drop food on the floor, I pick it up and eat it! My immune system gets lots of practice! It is equipped with the biological equivalent of fully automatic military assault rifles, with night vision and laser scopes … and we have recently acquired phosphorous grenades, cluster bombs, and anti-personnel fragmentation mines …. So, when my white blood cells are on patrol, reconnoitering my blood stream, seeking out strangers and other undesirables, if they see any—any—suspicious-looking germs of any kind, they don’t [mess] around. They whip out the weapons, and deposit the unlucky fellow directly into my colon! Directly into my colon! There’s no nonsense. There’s no Miranda warning, there’s none of that three-strikes-and-you’re-out [mess]. First offense, BAM! Into the colon you go.

“Speaking of my colon, I want you to know I don’t automatically wash my hands every time I go to the bathroom, okay? Can you deal with that? Sometimes I do. Sometimes I don’t. You know when I wash my hands? When I [mess] on them! That’s the only time, and you know how often that happens? Tops, tops, two to three times a week … tops! Maybe a little more frequently over the holidays. You know what I mean?

“And I’ll tell you something else my well-scrubbed friends… you don’t need to always need to shower every day, did you know that? It’s overkill, unless you work out or work outdoors, or for some reason come in intimate contact with huge amounts of filth and garbage every day, you don’t always need to shower. All you really need to do is to wash the four key areas; armpits, [anus], crotch, and teeth. Got that? Armpits, [anus], crotch, and teeth. In fact, you can save yourself a whole lot of time if you simply use the same brush on all four areas! [3]

[1]http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-500178_162-697672.html?pageNum=2&tag=contentMain;contentBody 

[2]Herz, Rachel. “The Cooties They Carry.” Psychology Today. August 2012. Pages 48-49.

[3]https://www.lingq.com/lesson/george-carlin-fear-of-germs-235986/