Read Louis L'Amour's The Walking Drum sometime. The main character has many trades and physician is one of them.
Posted on 07/13/2015 7:44:06 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
This may not be the biggest news story of the day, but it must be the most curious. As you are no doubt aware, there is great concern over resistance to conventional antibiotics. “Superbugs” are developing that are not easily killed with known medicines. So someone at the University of Nottingham, in England, thought to try an ancient remedy: a salve for eye infections found in Bald’s Leechbook, a 10th century Saxon volume in the British Library. The results were surprising:
A one thousand year old Anglo-Saxon remedy for eye infections which originates from a manuscript in the British Library has been found to kill the modern-day superbug MRSA in an unusual research collaboration at The University of Nottingham.
Dr Christina Lee, an Anglo-Saxon expert from the School of English has enlisted the help of microbiologists from the University’s Centre for Biomolecular Sciences to recreate a 10th century potion for eye infections from Bald’s Leechbook, an Old English leatherbound volume in the British Library, to see if it really works as an antibacterial remedy. The Leechbook is widely thought of as one of the earliest known medical textbooks and contains Anglo-Saxon medical advice and recipes for medicines, salves and treatments.
Early results on the “potion”, tested in vitro at Nottingham and backed up by mouse model tests at a university in the United States, are, in the words of the US collaborator, “astonishing”. The solution has had remarkable effects on Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) which is one of the most antibiotic-resistant bugs costing modern health services billions.
So what exactly is the potion? It doesn’t contain eye of newt, but close:
The recipe calls for two species of Allium (garlic and onion or leek), wine and oxgall (bile from a cow’s stomach). It describes a very specific method of making the topical solution including the use of a brass vessel to brew it in, a straining to purify it and an instruction to leave the mixture for nine days before use.
There is much more at the link, also here:
“[W]e found that Bald’s eyesalve is incredibly potent as an anti-Staphylococcal antibiotic in this context,” Harrison said.
“We were going from a mature, established population of a few billion cells, all stuck together in this highly protected biofilm coat, to really just a few thousand cells left alive. This is a massive, massive killing ability.”
This is all via Dr. Judith Curry’s excellent web site.
LOL! Youse guys!
I would think that any one of these ingredients, if applied topically or directly to the infection, would rupture the cell wall of any staphylococcal bacterium simply due to its PH ( either acidic or alkaline).
Ah!...But the trick is to get it into the blood stream.
Holdeth my mead! Watcheth this thou all!
Allergic to poison ivy ? grab a handful of the weed touch me not and crush it up and wipe on your skin before you go to the woods it will prevent the oil from penetrating your skin you may have to reapply if you sweat a lot but it does work
This book has the original text and the modern English translation side-by-side. The two PDF versions work fine. One is color and the other is black-and-white. Both are searchable.
Enjoy.
For tooth wark, if a worm eat the tooth, take an old holly leaf and one of the lower umbels of hartwort,2 and the upward part of sage, boil two doles3 in water, pour into a bowl and yawn over it, then the worms shall fall into the bowl. If a worm eat the teeth, take holly rind over a year old, and root of carline thistle, boil in so hot water hold in the mouth as hot as thou hottest may. For tooth worms, take acorn meal and henbane seed and wax, of all equally much, mingle these together, work into a wax candle, and burn it, let it reek into the mouth, put a black cloth under, then will the worms fall on it.
It is interesting to see a rediscovery of old effective remedies. Honey as a cure for infected wounds is one
Lactoferrin is also an effective treatment against mrsa.
I agree with your assessment about folk being smarter back then. My grandmother would often refer to some people as “having gone to seed”.
I’ll venture to say there hasn’t been a man of the caliber of Sir Isaac Newton since his birth.
I can't wait for her reaction :)
You have to wonder what technology we lost from ancient man. They must have discovered some amazing things that have just been lost to the centuries. So many cultures and nations, and so many people experimenting. We can’t even guess the extent of technology and home remedies, and knowledge that ancient man had that is so far lost or took centuries to re-discover.
Just amazing.
Bflr
Now that's a novel idea. In the right hands it could reduce the Federal bureaucracy to near zero. Depending on the efficacy, of course.
I know how these old remedies always work: Step 1, remove the eye...
The Antikythera mechanism comes to mind.
I just sent my wife the link to the article. She’s currently working on a staff vaccine.
<><><<
What’s wrong with her staff such that they need vaccination?
Read Louis L'Amour's The Walking Drum sometime. The main character has many trades and physician is one of them.
Colliodal silver kills MRSA.
MRSA does not develop a tolerance for it.
Don’t tell Pfizer!
You can buy this mixture of essential oils called Thieves Oil online. The people who devised the formula used it during the plague allowing them to steal from houses with plague victims without getting sick. I bought some during the ebola scare, but not sure if it would work.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.