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[DrHenley]

Some bacteria can actually help you fight other bacteria. Intestinal flora (beneficial bacteria in the gut) are an important part of your immune system. If you don't ever get the beneficial bacteria, then you have a compromised immune system.

During WWI, there was an outbreak of shigellosis among the German soldiers. There was one soldier that was unaffected. A strain of E. coli was isolated from that soldier's stool sample, and it was found that it would out-compete harmful bacteria and protect against intestinal bacterial infections. It is called E. coli Nissel after the German scientist that discovered it, Alfred Nissel. They made a pill out of it, which became the first commercial probiotic, Mutaflor.

http://www.probiotics-help.com/mutaflor.html

Mutaflor is still sold today, and you can order it on Amazon (it's pretty expensive though)
https://www.amazon.com/Mutaflor-Caps-Days-Supply-Brand/dp/B00V3MY654/ref=pd_sbs_14_1/133-5722829-2998835

 

[Kevin L]

Some bacteria can actually help you fight other bacteria. Intestinal flora (beneficial bacteria in the gut) are an important part of your immune system. If you don't ever get the beneficial bacteria, then you have a compromised immune system.

During WWI, there was an outbreak of shigellosis among the German soldiers. There was one soldier that was unaffected. A strain of E. coli was isolated from that soldier's stool sample, and it was found that it would out-compete harmful bacteria and protect against intestinal bacterial infections. It is called E. coli Nissel after the German scientist that discovered it, Alfred Nissel. They made a pill out of it, which became the first commercial probiotic, Mutaflor.

http://www.probiotics-help.com/mutaflor.html

Mutaflor is still sold today, and you can order it on Amazon (it's pretty expensive though)
https://www.amazon.com/Mutaflor-Caps-Days-Supply-Brand/dp/B00V3MY654/ref=pd_sbs_14_1/133-5722829-2998835

You're absolutely correct about bacteria helping to fight infection.

I'll even go you one better (if you won't take it as a childish form of "one-upmanship").

Before antibiotics and Salversan (Salversan is an arsenic-based drug that can still be used today for African sleeping sickness), doctors actually used malaria to cure syphilis, as there was a treatment for malaria (chinchona bark, or quinine sulfate) before there were real antibiotics.

About 1/3 of the time, malaria will completely cure syphilis. 1/3 of the time, it arrests syphilis and puts the patient in a remission where no further damage results.

Only 1/3 of the time did the procedure not work at all.

And out of the 4 different kinds of malaria that infect people (many other kinds infect reptiles, birds, and other mammals), they used malaria falcipirum . . . which is the worst kind . . . the kind that causes cerebral malaria.

This is a reason why I don't want to see extinct diseases destroyed in the lab.

Scientists are even using modified AIDS viruses as a vehicle to deliever genes to cells in instances where people have a hereditary disease.

As another example, cowpox (a mild disease of the hands) renders a person immune to smallpox. Jenner deliberately used cowpox to render people immune to smallpox, so now smallpox doesn't even exist anymore outside of the lab.

And so on.

 

[GaRp58]

There was a big ruckus in Germany from a doctor who would get into his rubber boots, walk outside in the mud and then come back into the hospital and walk in circles around the OP Rooms. The cleaning lady wasn't happy and complained. The reason was not that he wanted the place to be dirty, he wanted to make sure it was being cleaned properly AND was introducing the happy and good bacteria into his hospital...GP

 

[Arcticdude]

You must have really wanted a pizza!

I had some friends over and over a few beers someone suggested pizza for dinner. We didn't get pizza.

 

[Proud Prepper]

I had some friends over and over a few beers someone suggested pizza for dinner. We didn't get pizza.

Beer has most of the food groups