I don't think I've ever had an aversion to bathing but I have known a few people that are that way. They were known as our "stinky" friend and honestly, I am sure people avoided them because of that. The people I am thinking of have nothing on Amou Haji of Iran though, as this man hadn't washed at all for 67 years.
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This is a strange story that is definitely filled with some level of mental illness but the fact remains that this man, upon having not bathed and living a mostly outdoors life for many many years, rarely became ill and this phenomenon carried on for such a long amount of time that researches actually wanted to study his blood because it went against everything we think we know about hygiene and health that this man was in such great health. When his blood was studied it was found that he had, over the years, developed an extremely good immune system and had antibodies in his blood to deal with a wide array of commonly contracted sicknesses. Basically the consensus was that he actually HAD become ill just like everyone else, but it never was something he ever felt because he allowed the various strains of illness to just carry on.
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He lived a life that is the opposite of what we think of as healthy as he was a heavy smoker, lived in relative destitution and was constantly smoking. Although it was likely played up for the cameras, he was frequently known to smoke multiple cigarettes at once because "one is not enough."
When we see someone like this I think most of us would immediately presume that he is illiterate and not terribly good at anything but in the case of Amou Haji the opposite was actually the case. He was very well educated and people would stop by to discuss various academic subjects with him. In one recent meeting the visitor discussed the pros and cons of the Russian and French Revolutions with him and they had a great chat where the visitor felt as though he actually knew less about either of these things than Amou did. Think about it for a second: You probably feel as though you are smart-ish right? How much do you know about those two things other than the fact that they happened?
So why did Amou ever start doing this? He had a belief that washing was bringing him bad luck and that it was perhaps even going to kill him so one day, probably longer than you have been alive ago, he decided that he was not going to do it anymore. He set a world record for the longest recorded that anyone has ever taken a bath and this didn't appear to be anything that he was doing to gain fame over. I suppose you could argue that his theory about not washing because it could make him sick could have been correct since researched actually did discover that his immune system was in incredible shape specifically because of the fact that he never washed.
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I bet it was pretty difficult to hang out with the guy because not only did he not wash, but he consumed carcasses of dead animals and when he couldn't find or buy cigarettes, he would smoke the feces of animals in his pipe.
Well the sad part of this story is that as he gained some fame people were increasingly trying to get him to bathe feeling as though they knew better about how to run his life than he did even though he was content with his life of filth and isolation. Someone finally convinced him to bathe telling Amou that if he did so, he could make more friends. Shortly after taking the bath he fell ill and died in his home 5 weeks later.
I'm not suggesting that this man was dumb, the stories of the intellectual conversations that people have had with him would say precisely the opposite. I'm also not suggesting that anyone else out there should stop bathing but I think this can be a bit of a lesson about live and let live. It's ironic that the one thing he said nearly 70 years ago would make him sick and perhaps would kill him, appears to have done exactly that.
