“He was so crusted with alluvial deposits that one realized how little a mere bath would ever be able to effect. To fit him to take his place once more in polite society, he would certainly have to be sent to the cleaner’s. Indeed, it was a moot point whether it wouldn’t be simpler just to throw him away.”
-Bertie Wooster
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Maybe his skin microbiome was a potent barrier to disease and infection. Humans are not born with loofahs in their hands.
nor words in our mouths. but while we may be the only animal that talks, we are definitely not the only animal that bathes
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Or maybe he just didn’t get sick often because he was a fithy hermit and thus rarely in close proximity to other human beings carrying communicable pathogens.
As others have said it’s kind of silly to assume bathing is what did him in since A) the bath was months ago and B) the guy was 94. It seems likely that the local villagers pushed him to bathe because he required more support from the community due to his advanced age and nobody wanted to spend much time around him since he was such a stinky filthy mess.
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Right, and before we learned things like cooking our food and hygiene, we lived short miserable lives riddled with parasites and disease.
Evolution only cares that you live long enough to procreate. It doesn’t care if you have a good time.
There will always be outliers like this guy. He probably did have a bunch of parasites making him uncomfortable. He was a recluse, so that would be why he didn’t get much in the way of contagious diseases. If he was remote enough, he wouldn’t be exposed to many waterborne pathogens either (especially since there are no beavers in Iran).
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