LESSON 5 · The Microbe Within
Ancient Poop Medicine
This idea is old. In 4th-century China, the physician Ge Hong prescribed a stool suspension for severe diarrhea, a remedy later nicknamed "yellow soup." Centuries of folk knowledge quietly carried the same trick forward.
Modern medicine was slower to listen. An American surgeon, Ben Eiseman, reported using fecal enemas to treat dying patients in the 1950s — yet the approach was brushed off as too crude for decades. An effective cure sat ignored while people kept dying of infections it could have stopped.