A big hand for our old sausage-like bacterium friend, the one and only Helicobacter pylori, the only known organism able to thrive in the highly acidic environment of the human stomach. To prove that most stomach ulcers and gastritis were caused by colonisation with this bacterium and not by stress or spicy food, Australian scientist/ restaurateur Barry Marshall drank a test tube of H. pylori, developed gastritis, and treated himself with antibiotics. The proof of the pudding ...