Here was a child being born naturally, without any help or medical intervention, and so quietly that no one else in the entire village seemed to notice. The circumstances of this childbirth were a world away from our modern hospital deliveries, which I had experienced during my medical training: no sterile hospital environment, no ob-gyns to treat the mother’s vagina with antiseptics to “cleanse” it of microbes. Instead the newest Yanomami had been exposed not only to the mother’s vaginal microbiome but also to all the microbes on her (unwashed and unsanitized) hands, on the banana leaf and in
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