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By Root 807 0

his own bed, was an important starting point in that evolution. In a world where people regularly slept in the same bed with their family or coworkers or fellow guests at an inn, where you emptied your bowels at a public latrine with no dividers between you and the other users, and might expect to be buried in a mass grave, that was a radical step toward dignity and privacy. As gradually it became possible for people to sleep, defecate and be buried in a private space, the desire for privacy grew. Most drastically in twentieth—century North America, it intensified beyond a point that was reasonable or desirable. In 1986, in his book H2O and the Waters of Forgetfulness, Illich described the end result, as seen by the modern bourgeois: “Each citizen has the right to be surrounded by a buffer zone that protects him from the aura of others, while keeping his own to himself.”

The word “bathroom” appeared in the Oxford English Dictionary for the first time in 1972, in the Supplement.

Dignity and privacy are good things, but it looks as if America, especially, doesn’t know where to stop. Perhaps above all, it’s about control: to smell like a body, which alters on its own with time, physical exertion, anxiety, and climatic and hormonal variations, demonstrates that we’re not completely in charge, something we increasingly expect of ourselves. As more of the world spins out of control, it seems there is a greater drive to manage what we can, however pointless it may be.

Horace Miner noted that the Nacirema’s distrust of the body went in two directions: they were convinced not only that they were ugly but also that they were doomed to illness and infirmity. If North Americans find it difficult to control the look and smell of their bodies, their attempt to control their health is even more stressful—and particularly so in the last few decades.

Fears about disease are unquestionably exacerbating our twenty-first-century preoccupation with hygiene, whether the disease is the Norwalk virus, bird flu, SARS, a new disease called community-associated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (community-associated MRSA) or problems associated with the bacillus E. coli. In 2003, SARS struck 8,096 people and killed 774. Thirty-one of those deaths occurred in Toronto, more than anyplace outside Asia, and that taught Torontonians in short order the virtues of face masks, Purell and handwashing.

According to Vincent Lam and Colin Lee, Toronto emergency room doctors and the authors of The Flu Pandemic and You, those straightforward, low-tech practices are about the only hygienic steps that might protect us in the next epidemic or pandemic. Get a flu shot by all means, they say, exercise caution with live birds, and cook turkey and chicken well. But during a pandemic or even a normal flu outbreak, wash your hands often and properly, cover your face when sneezing or coughing, and keep a distance of at least one metre from sick people. If you’re taking care of a sick person, wear gloves and a mask. And keep some rubber gloves and containers of hand sanitizer with your emergency supplies.

For normal life, the one hygienic measure Drs. Lam and Lee advise is handwashing, to protect ourselves and other people from the spread of germs. If you’re a farmer or a manual labourer—jobs with lots of contact with the ground and potential for cuts—or if you play contact sports, washing your body could prevent organisms from entering through a “portal of entry,” a cut or a microcut. Otherwise, as far as health is concerned, the most you have to fear from not washing anything but your hands is skin problems, such as yeast or fungal infections.

Charles Gerba, a microbiologist at the University of Arizona who writes and broadcasts as Dr. Germ, agrees that the only parts of the body that need washing for serious health reasons are the hands, but he stresses the wily stubbornness of the thousands of microbes that regularly coat our hands. “Microbes never give up,” Dr. Gerba says admiringly. “They adapt and they follow our new habits.” He itemizes some of