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posted by CoolHand on Saturday April 04 2015, @02:11AM   Printer-friendly
from the maybe-there-is-something-to-old-witchcraft-potions-after-all dept.

The CBC has an article about a medieval recipe found in a 1,000-year-old book that can kill antibiotic-resistant superbugs.

The recipe's ingredients include: garlic, onion or leek, wine, and oxgall (bile from a cow's stomach). Oh, yeah, it's also supposed to be "brewed in a brass vessel, strained and then left to sit for nine days before use."

From the article:

A recipe for the potion, originally an eye salve, was found in Bald's Leechbok, a 10th-century book of Anglo-Saxon medical advice and recipes for medicines, salves and treatments found in the British Library.
...
When tested in mice on wounds infected with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), it performed at least as well as conventional antibiotics, reported scientists at the Annual Conference of the Society for General Microbiology this week in the United Kingdom.

"We were absolutely blown away by just how effective the combination of ingredients was," Freya Harrison, the University of Nottingham microbiologist who led the study, said in a statement.

Apparently, this recipe is even effective against biofilms which modern antibiotics really struggle to combat.

More details from The University of Nottingham and BBC News.

 
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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 04 2015, @02:24AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 04 2015, @02:24AM (#166280)

    The allicin from garlic is a known anti-microbial (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allicin#Antibacterial_activity), the bile would de-stabilize bacterial membranes, and copper leaching from the brass are probably the active components. The onions are probably redundant and the wine does not have enough alcohol to make a difference.

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  • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 04 2015, @02:46AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 04 2015, @02:46AM (#166283)

    Wine is probably there for two reasons. One is that water at the time this was created was marginal, at best, and you were better off using some other liquid base. I also wouldn't be surprised if the liquid didn't smell of high horror, so the wine smell would help mask that.

    • (Score: 2) by Non Sequor on Saturday April 04 2015, @10:25AM

      by Non Sequor (1005) on Saturday April 04 2015, @10:25AM (#166354) Journal

      Could the wine be a solvent or in any way contribute a yeast culture that might help? The onion would have more sugar than the garlic which might relate to a culture developing during the fermentation.

      --
      Write your congressman. Tell him he sucks.
  • (Score: 2) by tynin on Saturday April 04 2015, @02:57AM

    by tynin (2013) on Saturday April 04 2015, @02:57AM (#166284) Journal

    Garlic, bile, and copper... that you put in your eyes! Yikes!

    • (Score: 2) by tynin on Saturday April 04 2015, @02:59AM

      by tynin (2013) on Saturday April 04 2015, @02:59AM (#166286) Journal

      I guess what I'm saying is praise his noodly appendage for things like toilet papers and air conditioning. With those two things I can learn to handle garlic, bile, and copper in the eye.

  • (Score: 1) by albert on Sunday April 05 2015, @03:51AM

    by albert (276) on Sunday April 05 2015, @03:51AM (#166560)

    Without wine, you wouldn't get much copper. Wine is acidic.