wasn’t until 1959 that they were recognized as quite separate and given their own kingdom. They essentially divide into two groups—molds and yeasts. By and large fungi leave us alone. Only about three hundred out of several million species affect us at all, and most of those mycoses, as they are known, don’t make you really ill, but rather cause only mild discomfort or irritation, as with athlete’s foot, say. A few, however, are much nastier than that, and the number of nasty ones is growing. Candida albicans, the fungus behind thrush, until the 1950s was found only in the mouth and genitals,
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