杏吧原创

WHAT is humanity鈥檚 cultural bedrock and the basis of modern living? According to , the answer is the toilet. Potty training, she says, is one of the first means of our socialisation and cities would be impossible without sanitation.

is the story of how we go to the toilet; it is the cultural, bacteriological and psychological landscape of poo and pee. It is a masterly and intelligent work of reportage from a woman who, in the course of her research, has sat and squatted from Dar es Salaam to London, Johannesburg to Chengdu, Mumbai to Moscow.

George has a serious purpose in all this. She is outraged at the vast death toll caused by 鈥渨ater-borne disease鈥�, a euphemism for shit-borne disease. Poor sanitation, she reports, causes as many as 1 in 10 of the world鈥檚 illnesses. Access to a toilet adds 20 years to the average life, yet 2.6 billion people around the globe do not have one. George finds this division of haves and have-nots unacceptable. The Indian caste system, for example, forces millions of women to collect faeces from the toilets of the higher castes, transporting it in baskets on their heads for disposal, then denies them water sources to wash with afterwards.

鈥淎ccess to a toilet adds 20 years to the average life鈥�

These are disturbing messages, but they are buoyed by a tide of gutter journalism and toilet humour. Here we find the true story of the 鈥� a NASA folly for the space shuttle 鈥� and the development of Japan鈥檚 robo-toilets, with their bewildering array of dials and nozzles. Researchers have worked tirelessly to determine the precise angle for a water nozzle to wash Japanese post-excretion posteriors, while engineers designing efficient low-flush toilets experimented for years with substitute faeces, including apples and golf balls, before settling on soybean paste in a condom.

George鈥檚 strongest material is on toilet culture. She explores the cultural abyss between those who use paper and those who use water; private and public excretion (European monarchs used to hold court on both kinds of throne); and cultures that abhor ordure and the 鈥渇aecal-philiacs鈥�. The Chinese based an entire civilisation on using 鈥渘ight soil鈥� as a fertiliser and now power millions of homes with biogas. Why, George asks, do burglars worldwide leave excremental calling cards? And why are German males encouraged to sit for a pee, while many Swedish women like to stand? To sit or to squat: that is the question. George, we learn, is a reluctant squatter, but concedes its superiority. Sitting, especially on a high seat, 鈥渋mpedes release鈥� and may be causing colon cancer.

The book includes a wealth of odd statistics. The average dump is 250 grams. The average American wipes him or herself with a staggering 57 sheets of toilet paper a day, yet most men still have faecal debris on their underpants. A gram of faeces can contain 10 million viruses and 100 worm eggs. One person鈥檚 faeces and urine can fertilise 270 square metres of farmland. And did you know that the word 鈥渟hit鈥� has the same ancient root as the word science?

The Big Necessity salutes the heroes of the toilet. The name of Yorkshire鈥檚 visionary became a British euphemism for the bodily function he helped ease. Engineer saved Victorian London from the . And in the 1930s, a Shanghai gangster known as the Shit Queen ran a cartel controlling the city鈥檚 hundreds of night soil carts. In modern times there is , the flamboyant African National Congress guerrilla commander who became South Africa鈥檚 鈥渕inister for toilets鈥�, and , whose organisation for constructing public toilets and banishing al fresco bowel movements employs 50,000 people, and is India鈥檚 biggest charity.

George is admirably intelligent on the sewage politics of slums. She condemns African 鈥渇lying toilets鈥� (excrete into a plastic bag and throw) and describes in detail the problems of emptying an overflowing pit latrine. But she sees hope in home-grown sewer building and latrine digging programmes round the world.

I was relieved that colonic irrigation fails to make an appearance and that the sexual fetish of coprophagy, while alluded to, is never described. Still, George passes up few chances to entertain and elucidate in this new must-have for every toilet bookshelf.