Fellow Travelers

By Peter Stoler

THE LIFE THAT LIVES ON MAN by MICHAEL ANDREWS 183 pages. Taplinger. $9.95.

In an age of detergents and deodorant soaps, people like to imagine themselves to be germfree. But, as British Science Writer Michael Andrews points out, even the "most radiantly antiseptic housewife" is a walking zoo, covered with billions of bacteria. Fungi, a particularly unappealing form of flora, also find a foothold on Homo sapiens. Almost all humans harbor in their hair follicles microscopic mites, which under high magnification resemble eight-legged alligators. Other, less pleasant organisms, take up temporary residence in less public places. "Wherever man goes." Andrews wryly observes, "he is not alone." The compulsively clean and squeamish readers may start scratching long before they have finished the very heavily detailed first chapter. But those who accept the idea that ecology begins at home will find The Life That Lives on Man entertaining proof that "however hard we may wish to retreat from our animal origins, we will not be able to escape our fellow travelers."

Flaked Skin. Some visitors are dangerous and even lethal. Dust mites, which live in beds and browse on the flaked skin that humans shed at the rate of about a pound a year, can cause severe allergic reactions in the sensitive. Fleas, those tiny insects that can jump 150 times their own length, may carry plague bacilli on their athletic leaps. Head lice may transport the germs of typhus. Their cousin, Phthirus pubis, the so-called crab louse (in French, papillon d'amour, or butterfly of love), can cause, at the least, acute embarrassment.

Hosts to such animals should, of course, shoo their unwanted guests quickly. But people should not be so eager to rid themselves of other passengers. Writes Andrews: "Just as the wholesale use of DDT and Dieldrin came to be abhorred for their disruption of fragile natural systems of life in the wild, so the intimate deodorant spray was discovered to pose not just a threat of frostbite to the private parts, but also to decimate the natural populations of bacteria which held their evil cousins at bay."

As of now, the microscopic herds appear to have little to worry about. They have kept pace with man and are proving as evolutionary as his germicides. If humans manage to reach the stars in the next century the chances are good that his fellow creatures will also show an itch to travel.

Peter Stoler

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