Filthy Secrets

Unlocking the hygienic properties of plants in nature.

- William Jeffries

Day 16: Scratched on the thin skin of a dried piece of a gave leaf, you scribble another entry into your journal, kept daily since the crash. Alone, hot, thirsty and dirty, you’ve collected the grime and sweat of the past 15 days. Your teeth and tongue are covered with a thick film that tastes acrid, and you smell badly. Your hair is oily, tangled and itchy from irritations, perhaps because of the fleas embedded in the pelt of a javelina you skinned two days before.

Food is not an issue in the windswept desert; however, being constantly surrounded by your own filth is not only raising a concern for your physical health, it is weighing heavily on your morale. A disconcerting thought that remains with you is that more people have been killed by the tiniest microbes than all the world’s wars put together

WHY STAY CLEAN?

Disease and illness can run rampant when the infrastructure of a community is paralyzed or destroyed; the first widespread calamity to rear its ugly head after a major disaster is disease, usually from contaminated water.