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Watson, Lyall

articles by, [2] 32; [14] 11

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20040601162954

The Museum of Jurassic Technology

Lyall Watson on Lawrence Weschler, Mr Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder

I blame my grandmother. She was a great beach walker, scouring the coast for seashells thrown up by the Indian Ocean. She had eyes like a hawk, even at 60, finely tuned to any hint of a polished cowrie or the bright edge of a fan-shaped scallop half buried in the sand. And she was wonderfully generous, seeding our dawn searches with rare specimens left invitingly in my path.
20070601170207 Lyall Watson on Michael Andrews, Slightly Foxed Issue 14 - David Eccles

Fellow-Travellers, or The Trouble a Book Can Cause

Lyall Watson on Michael Andrews, The Life that Lives on Man

Florence Nightingale steadfastly refused to believe in bacteria, but she was wrong. The horrid truth is that every one of us carries billions of fellow-travellers, and no amount of bathing can ever change their number. The good news, however, is that most of our resident flora and fauna are harmless, or actually beneficial to our health. In 1976, Michael Andrews published these tidings in his bestselling The Life that Lives on Man, with all the details of our intimate companions in the micro-deserts of our forearms and the swamps of our underarms. But he failed to convince me that such slithy beasts as parasitic roundworms and liver flukes were equally benign. So I tried some internal experiments of my own.

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