The Wit’s Guide to Hygiene

Or, suspiciously clean teeth

Feet don’t pail me now, published c.1688-90, Jean Dieu de Saint Jean

All hygiene is relative, especially when they’re not your relatives. According to Katherine Ashenburg’s squeaky 2007 book The Dirt on Clean: An Unsanitized History, upkeep is often about keeping out those who are either too clean or not clean enough.

“Even more than in the eye or the nose, cleanliness exists in the mind of the beholder,” she writes. “Every culture defines it for itself, choosing what it sees as the perfect point between squalid and over-fastidious.” Or to deploy a Russell’s Conjugation: “I am tidy; you are fussy; he’s a slob.”

“When I got out of high school they retired my jersey, but it was for hygiene and sanitary reasons.”
— George Carlin

History’s greatest hygienic insult came from the Roman poet Catallus, who figured out a way to insult the Celtiberians for being dirty even if when appeared clean:

But you’re a Spaniard,
and we already know the Spanish custom:
how Spaniards clean their teeth
and scour their gums with the same water that issues from their bladders.
So if your teeth are clean, my friend,
we know how you have used your urine.

And while we’re piling on the Spanish of yore, Yuval Noah Harari writes that when they landed in Mexico, the natives followed them around with burning incense: “The Spaniards thought it was a mark of divine honour. We know from native sources that they found the newcomers’ smell unbearable.”

“When you leave New York, you are astonished at how clean the rest of the world is. Clean is not enough.”
— Fran Lebowitz

Sigmund Freud, who surely never emptied his own ashtrays, wrote about “housewife’s neurosis,” a condition in which those forced to constantly pick up after others become fanatically tidy as a sublimated form of revenge. Which sounds like yet another way to judge someone who’s cleaner than you are. 

“It is better to light just one candle than to clean the whole apartment.”
— Eileen Courtney  

If you’re rich enough, you pay people to keep you clean. Which might explain why dirt sticks to money: You can be filthy rich until they clean you out, and investors hate getting a haircut or worse, taking a bath. H.L. Mencken said that a man feels wealthy when he makes $100 a year more than his wife’s sister’s husband. So if we use hygiene as a similar yardstick, maybe a man can feel healthy if he has one fewer stomach bug per annum than his brother-in-law?

“Cleanliness becomes more important when godliness is unlikely.”
— P. J. O'Rourke

It is tempting to plot the decline of religion against the rise of cleanliness. Purity of the soul is hard to measure and maybe not even desirable. And purity of the body is similar — the hygiene hypothesis has it that our rigorous disinfecting of everything around us is responsible for the modern boom in allergies. The old saying that God made dirt so dirt can’t hurt is thus provably wrong and potentially right. 

“I have had a good many more uplifting thoughts, creative and expansive visions—while soaking in comfortable baths or drying myself after bracing showers—in well-equipped American bathrooms than I have ever had in any cathedral.”
— Edmund Wilson

It’s so tedious when the answer is moderation, but here we are. Wash your hands frequently but not with antibacterial soap. Ignore best before dates but consider expiration dates. Don’t scour your gums with Spanish urine, even if everyone is doing it on TikTok. And though your body is home to 38 trillion bacteria, remember it’s not a democracy.

“Always fornicate between clean sheets and spit on a well-scrubbed floor.”
— Christopher Fry

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ReccoMention!

For my paying subscribers (C$30/yr!) this week, an appraisal of the Funniest Book Ever … or is it?

Riposte Card 

For my founding subscribers ($C80/yr!), a beautiful limited-edition Riposte Card each month! We’ve been doing this for a whole year now, so this week, a look at how it all began:

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Quote Vote

“A race track is a place where windows clean people.”
— Danny Thomas

Gotta start thinking about taxes soon! And with that drudgery in mind, we can call upon the dismal scientists next week — or not, and turn our minds to the spring that will soon be in full sprung! The choice, as ever, is yours.

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I washed my hands before typing Issue No. 246 of Get Wit Quick, as I wouldn’t want your computer to catch a virus. Personally, I think people who iron their bedsheets are a bit much and I don’t think ketchup should be refrigerated. Also not in my fridge: My book Elements of Wit: Mastering The Art of Being Interesting. Use your elbow to tap the ❤️ below.