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20 Small World
第二十章 小生物的世界
It's probably not a good idea to take too personal an interest in your microbes. Louis Pasteur, the great French chemist and bacteriologist, became so preoccupied with them that he took to peering critically at every dish placed before him with a magnifying glass, a habit that presumably did not win him many repeat invitations to dinner.
要是你對身邊的微生物過于在意，這很可能不是個好習慣。法國大化學家、微生物學家路易·巴斯德對他身邊的微生物如此小心，連放到面前的每盆菜肴都要用放大鏡仔細看一眼。由于他的這種習慣，很多人有可能不會再邀請他吃飯。
In fact, there is no point in trying to hide from your bacteria, for they are on and around you always, in numbers you can't conceive. If you are in good health and averagely diligent about hygiene, you will have a herd of about one trillion bacteria grazing on your fleshy plains— about a hundred thousand of them on every square centimeter of skin. They are there to dine off the ten billion or so flakes of skin you shed every day, plus all the tasty oils and fortifying minerals that seep out from every pore and fissure. You are for them the ultimate food court, with the convenience of warmth and constant mobility thrown in. By way of thanks, they give you B.O.
實際上，你也無須回避細菌，因為你的身上和周圍總是有很多細菌，多得簡直無法想象。即使你身體很健康，而且總的來說很注意衛生，也大約有一萬億個細菌在你的皮膚上進食——每平方厘米上有10萬個左右。它們在那里吃掉100億片左右你每天脫落的皮屑，再加上從每個毛孔和組織里流出來的味道不錯的油脂，以及強身壯體的礦物質。你是它們舉行冷餐會的場所，還具有暖暖和和、不停地移動的便利條件。為了表示感激，它們給你體臭。
And those are just the bacteria that inhabit your skin. There are trillions more tucked away in your gut and nasal passages, clinging to your hair and eyelashes, swimming over the surface of your eyes, drilling through the enamel of your teeth. Your digestive system alone is host to more than a hundred trillion microbes, of at least four hundred types. Some deal with sugars, some with starches, some attack other bacteria. A surprising number, like the ubiquitous intestinal spirochetes, have no detectable function at all. They just seem to like to be with you.
上面說的只是寄生在你皮膚上的細菌。還有幾萬億個細菌鉆進你的腸胃里和鼻孔里，粘在你的頭發和睫毛上，在你的眼睛表面游泳，在你的牙齦上打孔。光你的消化系統就是100萬億個以上細菌的寄主，至少有400多個品種。有的分解糖，有的處理淀粉，有的向別的細菌發起攻擊。許多細菌沒有明顯的作用，比如無處不在的腸內螺旋體。它們似乎只喜歡跟你在一起。
