Like mad Nebuchadnezzar, who sheeplike browsed Babylon's pastures, U.S. parachute troops and other isolated forces can subsist on leaves, wood and grass. At least, Biochemist Gustav J. Martin of New York thinks so. But, as he told the American Chemical Society in Memphis last week, soldiers' guts first have to be conditioned to this allfours diet, by getting certain harmless bacteria domiciled among the trillions of other bacteria normally present in the human intestine.
The cellulose-digesting bacteria are of the aciduric group, akin to the Lactobacillus acidophilus of Bulgarian buttermilk, which (some scientists...