204 WARFARE IN THE HUMAN BODY 



still obscure might illustrate this better than abstract 

 reasoning, if the processes involved in its study showed in 

 what ways the brain is apt to work, and how purely 

 magical concepts may lead to useful discovery. If we 

 learn how our remote ancestors thought, we shall discern, 

 perhaps with humility, that we are their true descendants, 

 and that modern life with all its advantages, even the 

 modern balneologist and the very household bath itself, is 

 still a subject for the anthropologist. 



Although very few of us are like the Japanese maid 

 who is said to have apologized to her European mistress 

 for not taking more than three hot baths during a 

 busy day, to most educated men bathing seems a natural, 

 almost an instinctive process. They would be uncom- 

 fortable now if anything went wrong with the morning 

 bath, as it is apt to do when the coal supply fails. Such 

 discomfort, however, is soon cured by compulsory absti- 

 nence, for my own experience has taught me that after 

 three days want of washing little discomfort is felt by the 

 average man. On two occasions in my life, once at sea 

 coming up to the Falkland Islands from the Horn in very 

 heavy weather, and once in the Australian bush when there 

 was a drought, I was unable for a fortnight at a time to do 

 so much as wash my face. The feeling of discomfort dis- 

 appeared on the second or third day, and I seemed ready 

 to do without washing for the rest of my life. 



The truth is that cleanliness is not natural to mankind. 

 Most parents know from their own experience that to 

 teach a child to persevere with soap and water is the most 

 arduous task that falls to a mother or a nurse. Washing 

 thus appears to be anything but the result of instinct, 

 since it is not so much as an easily acquired habit. Un- 

 luckily for the vast body of the population in our civil- 



