So swine flu is on the minds of lots of folks right now, of course. I'm concerned as well (especially knowing that antivaxxers are probably licking their chops over this), but I'm also lazy and busy, so instead of new material I'll repost this blog entry from 2005 about hygiene and hand washing. It's still true and always will be.
Do you wash your hands after using the bathroom? No? Why the hell not? In the 1840s (the 1840s, folks, 160 years ago), Ignaz Phillip Semmelweis figured that washing hands before surgery would cut the infection rate of patients... and this was decades before germs were tagged as the cause of diseases. Our bodies harbor vast numbers of germs, and a lot of them just love to hang out in our nether regions. Here's a fun thing to know: human feces are 75% water, but of the remaining 25%, the ...
