Two other areas look promising. One is more sophisticated deployment of the humble antibiotic, arguably the pharma industry's most effective invention. At the moment antibiotics are used mainly to kill infections. In the future they might have a more subtle use-to manipulate the mix of bugs within a human, so that good bugs spread at the expense of bad ones.

The other field that may be changed is genetics. Many of the diseases in which the microbiome is implicated seem to run in families. In some, such as heart disease, that is partly explained by known human genes. In a lot, though, most notably autism, the genetic link is obscure. This may be because geneticists have been looking at the wrong set of genes-the 23,000 rather than the 3m. For those 3m are still inherited. They are largely picked up from your mother during the messy process of birth. Though no clear example is yet known, it is possible that particular disease-inducing strains are being passed down the generations in this way.

As with all such upheavals, it is unclear where the microbiome revolution will end up. Doctors and biologists may truly come to think of people as superorganisms. Then again, they may not. What is clear, though, is that turning thinking inside out in this way is yielding new insights into seemingly intractable medical problems, and there is a good chance cures will follow. Vive la révolution!