The faecal transplant, also known as trans-poo-sion, surely has the title of medicine’s most disgusting procedure.

It is pretty much what you are imagining – part of a faecal stool is taken from one person and given to another.

The purpose is to introduce new beneficial microbes to the receiving patient’s digestive system.

And it can be life-saving.

It shows just how important microbes, which colonise nearly every surface of our body, are to our health.

The gut is an exceptionally rich world with many different species of micro-organisms interacting with each other and our human tissue.

Down in the dark, oxygen-deprived depths of your bowels is an ecosystem as rich as a rainforest or coral reef.

But a bacterium called Clostridium difficile (C. difficile) can take over and dominate the bowels.

It is an opportunist and normally takes hold after patients have been treated with antibiotics.

Antibiotic drugs are one of the miracles of the modern age, but they kill good and bad bacteria alike.

They are like a forest fire burning through the gut’s microbiome – the collected micro-organisms living down there – leaving behind a scorched microbial earth on which C. difficile flourishes.

Read the full article here.