Michael Andrews (1)

The Life That Lives on Man is an entertaining and informative little book.

It is rather old (1976) and biology is a fast-moving field. However, at the level of detail given, there is probably little that would now be considered wrong, though if Andrews were writing this book today, advances in genome sequencing would enable him to indicate even more diversity among micro-organisms than he then could. That would fit well with his theme that our skin should be considered as an eco-system in which the various organisms co-operate and compete with each other and with us.

The book contains introductory chapters, followed by chapters about micro-organisms (bacteria, viruses, fungi), mites and ticks, fleas (followed by an extra chapter on plague), lice, and bedbugs (though bedbugs are of course merely frequent visitors, not residents of our surface). The final chapter, Learning to live with our ecology, puts the subject into useful perspective.… (mais)