Microorganisms Indigenous to Man.

Woese published his results in 1977, in a paper that rebranded the methanogens as the archaebacteria, later renamed simply as archaea.

A detailed history of bacteriology, published in 1938, failed to mention our resident microbes at all.21 The leading textbook in the field gave them a lonely chapter, but mainly talked about how to distinguish them from pathogens. They were notable only because they had to be separated from their more interesting peers.

The Prolongation of Life: Optimistic Studies.

In 1909, Kendall described the gut as a “singularly perfect incubator” for bacteria whose activities were “not in active opposition to those of the host”.18 They might opportunistically cause disease when a host’s resistance was lowered, but they were otherwise harmless. Could they possibly be beneficial? Ironically, Pasteur, the man who cocked the

This type of partnership gained a new term – symbiosis, from the Greek for ‘together’ and ‘living’.13 The word itself was a neutral one, implying any form of coexistence. If one partner benefited at the expense of the other, it was a parasite (or a pathogen if it caused disease). If it benefited without affecting its host, it was a commensal. If it

According to a 1910 textbook, the “bad germs” that everyone focused on were a “small, specialised off-shoot of the realm of bacteria, and, broadly speaking, actually of minor importance”.

The narrative of disease and death still dominates our view of microbiology.

Robert Koch