Sunday, July 31, 2011

Germs and all

I  like to think that the birds and the squirrels and the black bears and the hornets are outside and not in the house.  But I know that spiders, house flies and other creatures are inside and get inside.  Furthermore, the little devils multiply.

I have read that Pasteur held a public demonstration of the presence of germs around us and that ladies gasped and fainted once they understood.

I think Van Leeuwenhoek is credited with discovering how to make a microscope.  I read that he was a weaver and weavers had magnifying glasses to see tiny bits of their work.  Anton began looking at pond water with such a glass and found all sorts of tiny creatures in it that he hadn't known were there.  Over time, the message finally got through that there are many sorts of life that are too small for us to see or experience.  More study revealed that this layer of life contains forms that can and do kill us and rot us or make us sick.  However, it also contains forms that we depend on to help us digest food.

When we have trouble with our digestion (needed, of course, to keep us alive) we sometimes purposely take in foods that we know contain micro-organisms but ones that benefit us, as with yogurt and Culturelle. The book "Life on Man" lists many sorts of life that lives on us, both inside and on our skin. The book The Demon Under the Microscope by Thomas Hager is a good one for some insight into the fight to understand and control very small critters.

As I age, I expect my body has more trouble recognizing and successfully interfering with attempts by other sorts of life to use me for fuel and energy.  As I look out the window, I see a mother robin feeding three chicks six feet away.  I am confident that she and her babies will not live through 7 decades and I wonder what her body and habits do to minimize trouble with the tiny sorts of life.

I have read that the total weight of earthly bacteria is far greater than the combined weight of humans and that doesn't even count the microscopic larger-than-bacteria forms.  Yet, the small forms are important in the food chain and in transforming the dead bodies of plants and animals back into soil and the elements.

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