Some years ago, my son Dillon attended Bard College, a very liberal arts college where, apparently, clothing is optional. I remember him calling me one evening, a bit excited, because there was going to be a clothing-optional party. He wanted my advice on what to wear — or not.

I don’t recall what I said, but when I spoke to him again, he said he went clothed. He seemed a bit wiser when he said, “You are probably not going to believe this, but most people just look better with their clothes on.”

Nudity generally makes people uncomfortable. Take off someone’s clothes, sit him in a cold room and have him wait too long for his fully clothed doctor to walk in, and it’s almost guaranteed his blood pressure will go up. He is, quite literally, stripped of, well, everything.

In medical school we were taught to completely undress our patients and not to be afraid of nakedness. A minimal cardiac exam involved inspection, palpation, percussion and auscultation (look, feel, tap and listen) of the heart, which meant completely undressing the patient from the waist up. In this way, it’s true that you get to find all kinds of heaves, murmurs, deformities and thrills. A thrill, by the way, is a medical term for a vibratory sensation caused by turbulent blood rushing rapidly through a vessel, to be distinguished from the cheap thrill you get from, say, a peep show.

I remember being afraid that I, a red-blooded, Italian-American male, might find myself attracted to the nakedness of my female patients. I quickly learned, of course, what my son would learn many years later regarding nudity. Even when I found myself examining an extremely pretty woman, I was relieved that there was absolutely nothing attractive or sexy about it. Unlike looking at Playboy or any other vehicle of sexual exhibitionism, looking at someone naked in the medical setting is about as interesting as, say, looking at their liver or their spleen. Not at all sexy, but in a clinical setting, possibly very interesting. I felt quite a thrill (in both senses of the word) the first time I put my hand on a live, beating heart.

I wonder if my med school professors wanted our patients completely undressed because it was good medicine, or to have us overcome our discomfort with an undressed body. I’d probably fail medical school for saying this, but in cardiology, at least, a naked exam is usually a lot less valuable to me than talking to someone. I even conducted an informal study in my office by listening to hearts through clothing and then without clothing. Unless someone is wearing wool (which makes someone sound like they are in heart failure), there is, with occasional exceptions, no need to get that person nude for a heart exam. Compared to their skin, muscle and fat, a thin shirt is not likely to dampen the “lub-dup” sounds of their heart.

My wife and I vacationed once where, across a local bay, there was a small nudist island. For my morning exercise, I’d swim across the bay and back. When I got to the island one morning, I put my feet on land to catch my breath, and as the water rolled out of my vision, I found myself staring at the backside of an enormous man, bent over and showing me all of the parts of him I never wanted to see. I turned and swam away, laughing under water as I remembered my son’s words.