Ready for your crapsule? Faecal transplants could play a huge role in future medicine

An effective treatment for a whole raft of diseases, from irritable bowel syndrome to arthritis and even Alzheimer's, comes from the most unlikely of sources - human poo. James Kinross explains the role gut biomes play in our health

As a nation, we British are obsessed with our gut function, largely because it has never been unhealthier. I spend large parts of my working day talking to patients about their bowel habits, and many of them want to talk about little else. There is also a deeper, more fundamental fascination with the digestive system; the colon is a national source of comedy that has kept us going through every crisis since the beginning of time.

Shit" is a crucial and ubiquitous word that serves as a noun, a verb and an adjective, propping up the entire English language. This wondrous word is both a profanity and a term used to denote an item of high quality, and it is liberally sprinkled into the daily chatter of our lives.