When Poop Becomes Medicine
Once a weird, fringe treatment, fecal transplants have started becoming mainstream.
In 1957, a young microbiologist named Stanley Falkow started asking sick people to swallow their own poop.
Falkow was working as a technician in a hospital lab at a time when patients were besieged by a rogueTo prevent the bug from infecting people during surgery, all patients were told to take preemptive antibiotics before their operations. Unfortunately, these drugs also decimated the beneficial bacteria in their guts, leaving them with diarrhea and indigestion. Their stools “were even odorless,” Falkow later wrote. “Few stools can make that claim.”
