Shitting Pretty
Dr. Jane Wilson-Howarth (Reviewed by The Editor - Rebecca Brown)
2000 Travelers' Tales
ISBN: 1885211473
How to Stay Clean & Healthy While Traveling.
Now you have to forgive a lady for calling a spade a spade especially when she has to use it for her latest ‘deposit'.
Really, even the best of us have to consider how to stay healthy on the road & not let our basic needs get in the way of adventure & fun, right? This fun book gives new meaning to “go in peace”, as we explore our world.
Well, Dr. Wilson-Howarth has written the perfect pocket book for your travels, packed with ideas & information on just how to go about eating, bathing & going to the bathroom in challenging & risky territories.
& in this modern day & age where might that be? Just about anywhere other than our own home town! & while we're shivering in righteous dread, forget not what cultural lessons there are to be learnt from the simple act of using the bathroom in a foreign land.
I remember well my forays in France, Portugal, Spain & America! I've yet to make it to the Equator, where the “filth-to-mouth” aspect of travel is ubiquitous.
Don't dismiss her timely & important information just because she's funny, she has a lot to teach us. You will learn how to:
• avoid intestinal disruptions such as diarrhea, parasites & the scarier diseases of malaria, tyhoid, dysentery & hepatitis, as well as how to identify symptoms & what their cures might be.
• the basics of how to eat & drink safely in a foreign place.
• tame your bodily functions on long bus rides.
• travel with kids & keep 'em healthy.
• make environmentally & hygienically sound tips for “making a deposit.” & cope without toilet paper.
• the amazing variety of foreign toilets.
• assess your health upon return...& much, much more!
Having said all that serious stuff, Dr. Wilson-Howarth also has a finely tuned sense of humor which is abundant in her book. Courtesy of our Victorian ancestors, our language is thick with euphemisms for this most basic of deeds.
Dr. Jane Wilson-Howarth is a fellow of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene & has published a range of papers in academic medical journals. She lectures widely & writes a regular medical feature for Wanderlust magazine.
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