The weight of bacteria that each of us carries around is equal to that of our brain, a kilogram of the creatures, billions of them, ten times as many in the gut alone as the number of human cells in the body. There may be 10,000 distinct kinds, with a different community on the forehead from that on the sole. There are fewer kinds in the mouth or stomach than at the back of the knee, which has a more diverse population than any other part.
This is surprising and interesting, and we would like to know more about this teeming personal nature reserve. The intestinal appendix, Steve Jones explains, ‘once assumed to have no useful role’, acts as a reservoir from which, in the event of an attack on the internal ecosystem by aggressive bacteria, useful cells can emerge once the coast is clear. I knew I shouldn’t have let a surgeon make off with my appendix, but science knew best.
The connection with the Bible here is that a bacterium (of the kind that causes leprosy) was found in the shroud of a man buried in the first century in Jerusalem, at Haceldama, the ‘Field of Blood’ mentioned in the Gospel. ‘In biblical times that disease was feared above all others,’ Professor Jones says.
Is that true? There are two chapters in Leviticus that go into bewildering detail about the signs of leprosy. There is the separate case of the Syrian Naaman, cured of leprosy by Elisha. Then there are the lepers cured by Jesus. There is no talk in the Bible of the disease being feared. In any case ‘the leprosy of Leviticus may not have been the malady we now know by that name, the author says.
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