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The CSO has just sent me a subscriber-only article from the Wall Street Journal that contains the following bit of ...interesting advice:

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the American immune system is in serious trouble. A study released this year showed a 50% rise from 1997 to 2011 in the incidence of food allergies among children, with a whopping 69% rise in eczema sufferers. The only kids apparently not itching and sneezing were those living on farms and in other insalubrious places.

The idea that we've become too clean for our own health will come as a shock to a nation that spends billions on personal hygiene products. Yet it seems as though our malodorous ancient forebears were on to something....

Some bathing stalwarts may resist the new directive to go dirty. But they should recall the words of G.K. Chesterton, who argued that "man does not live by soap alone" and "hygiene, or even health, is not much good unless you…feel a healthy indifference to it."

(Memo to me: Chesterton, though a genius, wasn’t right about everything.)

I recall hearing such suggestions from official and semi-official sources years ago. A batch of them were directed at hand sanitizers and anti-microbial soaps. They fell on deaf ears (as if you needed to be told, you excessively hygiene-conscious American person, you). Hopefully they will always fall on deaf ears...because cleanliness is a survival imperative.

There are threats in the world that arise from sources other than bacilli and viruses. Some of the most serious of them are other homo sapiens terrestrialis. Uncleanliness leads to malodorousness, and body odor is a trigger for some of our most regrettable responses to one another.

It should surprise no one that male body odor is a trigger for aggression. That’s the sort of thing young men are expected to learn through their formative experiences in locker rooms and elevators. However, we’re apparently too prissy to teach young women that female body odor is a trigger for sexual aggression from young men: i.e., attempted rape. Fortunately, Americans’ preference for cleanliness substitutes for that useful bit of knowledge. Unfortunately, an unintended consequence of American cleanliness is a disinclination to breed, but Yankee ingenuity has addressed that problem with diet, exercise, special clothing, exorbitantly expensive fragrances sold in quarter-ounce bottles, and by-subscription-only television productions found on the higher-numbered channels.

(How Europeans deal with the aggression problem, your humble servant knoweth not. One theory is that once one passes a certain threshold of corporal filth, our natural aggressive responses are neutralized by a repugnance great enough to keep us at arm’s length, though exceptions arise during soccer tournaments and major land wars. How do they elicit sufficient interest in sex to breed? Well, they don’t do that any more, now do they?)

Concerning the acquisition of important immunities: That’s why we (should) let the kids play in the dirt, and with domesticated animals (almost) equally dirty. But the aforementioned survival imperative of staying clean is why we demand that they wash up before sitting down for dinner. Too many sharp implements on the table, don’t y’know. As for the hijinks that once occurred under the tablecloth, the less said the better.

What’s that you say? Would the same aggression dynamics apply to an encounter between a gaggle of smelly humans and a tour group of pentapodal aliens from Aldebaran, all of whom were in the Big Apple to see the Christmas trimmings at Macy’s, if the lot were jammed into the F train just after enjoying the corned beef and cabbage lunch special at McSweeney’s? That’s a very good question, Gentle Reader. We’ll save it for another day.