There have been bacteria on this planet for at least the last 3.5 billion years. For the entirety of our species’ existence we have relied on bacteria to aid us in breaking down food, whilst being helpless to guard against their wrath whenever we had a bacterial infection. It wasn’t until the late 19th century that more powerful microscopes lead us to understand what bacteria were and how the infections spread, in what was known at the time as ‘germ theory.’ Understanding how bacteria made people unwell led us to greatly improve hygiene; with large government programmes to build sanitation systems, […]
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