The Shaking Hands
Syndrome
Just Do it, or Just Don't?
An impulsive action may be correct, but if it involves smoking, drinking alcohol, taking a drug, making a promise or taking a loan you can't afford, mortgaging your home to join a pyramid scheme or buy into some grand confidence trick, then just don't do it!
What have the ancients said? After all, advice that has stood the test of time must have some quality recommending it. The great Chinese philosopher Mencius, some 300 years B.C., said,
"What you do is
determined by what you decide not to do."
It is like cutting a hedge; the important part is what is left. Effective action is the result of thoughtful inaction.
Another ancient text, the Bible no less, declares,
"It was said to the
ancients, Do not forswear yourself but render what you have sworn. But I say to you, Do not swear at all;
neither by heaven because it is the throne of God; nor by the earth because it
is the footstool of his feet; nor by Jerusalem because it is the city of the
great king. Neither swear by your head,
because you cannot make one hair white or black. But let your yes mean yes and your no mean no. Anything more than this is from
evil." Mt 5, 33
* * *
How does this apply?
As a medical practitioner aware of the havoc caused by infection, I was surprised to read some years back that large-scale surveys, directed to the spread of infectious disease identified shaking hands as a channel of contagion more potent than air borne transmission. This applies even to influenza, which public health education has widely dramatized as a ‘sneeze disease’. Well it is. It is spread by exhaled droplets, but along with a hundred other bacteria and viruses, it is more commonly spread by shaking hands.
Following these reports no public warning bells rang. It is the same as we saw in the case of lung and other disease caused by smoking, where a full 25 years passed before the information leaped from the medical to the popular media. On the face of it, there is but one option; we must decline to shake hands.
On what grounds, for so inverted has the world become that not to grasp an extended hand is taken as a slight and offence. I soon earned the label ‘eccentric’ reserved for those who do not meld into the expected norm, but in the discussions that ensured I at least learned the answer to the puzzling question, why we shake hands.
The hand shake is intended as an assurance of trust and confidence, but it is generated by its opposite, a primitive sense of fear and hostility. Research indicates that the open hand signals, "Look, no rock in my hand: let us struggle but without intent to kill.”
Only the symbolism persists in modern society, the thrusting out of the hand, the shake, and in some countries an added shoulder slap and bear hug. This mock battle is magnified in the political arena and emblazoned on the screen, when the simple fact is that it is, or should be unnecessary. Family and close friends do not shake hands, because it is the symbol for overcoming hostility through challenge.
We should extend our trust and confidence to others as a matter of course. Do not swear. Do not promise in advance of your expectation. Do not shake hands. You may not have a rock in your hand, but what about poliomyelitis or the virus of hepatitis? Your contact may not drop dead, but some contacts down the chain and unknown weeks later a child may do exactly that.
Undetected, it is neither murder nor manslaughter, but just as deadly. We need to realize that a world of six or more billion people is no longer the world of yesterday. It is a world with its own conditions, fact and relations, sense and reality. We need to change our habits and thinking and fit into it as required. Neither catching a disease nor becoming aware of its occurrence we can still be an agent in a chain of events leading to untold suffering and death.
An overlooked point is that besides passing on a germ from (a) to (b) to (c), disease also spreads by subclinical infection and carrier states, so that invisible links exist between case and case. Subclinical means that the infection goes through its paces in a vector or a series of vectors, taking purchase and multiplying prolifically in each, but thanks to resistance not breaking surface as a florid illness. A carrier is one in whom this infectious state persists for an extended period. The danger is greater than you think, so don’t shake hands. Just let your yes, mean yes, and your no, no.
Stephen W. Taylor MbChB 94/01/24