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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.
(Score: 2) by TLA on Sunday April 05 2015, @03:28PM
points out something that's been known for centuries: that garlic kills most known pathogens.
Got a sore throat? Gargle garlic water.
Want to "clean" a room (of airborne pathogens)? Leave half an onion out on a saucer: through some still unknown mechanism, it draws airborne bacteria, viruses and fungal spores to it and locks them down. Discard the onion and replace after half a day. Also explains why cut bulbs don't keep (they spoil REALLY fast).
Want to inhibit microbial growth with commonly available compounds? Pickle in salt (brine) or vinegar. Anything to make the environment as hostile to microbes as you possibly can - like chewing a citrus after a meal, to acidify your mouth.
Aside from that, I really do think that use of synthetic chemicals, also referred to as pharmaceuticals, should be what's referred to as alternative medicine, since it's the traditional medicine that seems to work - pathogenic resistance to drugs refers almost exclusively to those drugs manufactured in a laboratory rather than something which grows out of the ground. Also something which is very interesting to the University of Nottingham Biological Sciences Department.
I'm one of those nutjobs you read about who avoids needles for the simple reason that they make him uncomfortable and unpleasant to be around. I prefer preventive measures that don't bypass four out of five lines of natural bodily defence against microbial invasion on top of introducing totally unknown substances to the blood-brain barrier. No thanks, you can keep it. I will maintain my forty years of not a single cold or flu no thanks at all to the wonders of "modern medicine".
Excuse me, I think I need to reboot my horse. - NCommander