Medieval Medicine Made From Onions and Bile Found Effective Against Modern MRSA Superbug

When you hear “medieval,” what do you think? Avalon and Camelot? Fire breathing dragons, magical swords, potions and magic spells? Well, it turns out that one magic potion is actually quite effective against a deadly infection that exists today.

Scientists at Nottingham University were sifting through Bald’s Leechbook, a 10th  century Latin and Anglo-Saxon manual for pharmaceutical science, when they found a recipe for something called “eyesalve.” The book is about a thousand years old, but eyesalve is still good against MRSA.

MRSA, by the way, is not just a flesh wound. It’s a deadly infection that starts with boils, develops in the joints, bloodstream, bones, lungs, and ends with death. Here’s the recipe:

Ingredients:
2 species of onion
wine
cow bile

Directions:
Brew

The recipe isn’t an elegant list of flowers,newts, and elderberries, and one does wonder how medieval folks discovered the recipe in the first place. Either way, eyesalve showed positive results in lab tests. Only 1 out of 1000 bacterial cells survived the salve.

How does it work? The scientists believe that it wasn’t a specific ingredient that worked, but the brewing method that made the concoction. Otherwise, they have no idea and they’re still figuring it out. Maybe we should go back in time and do some field work.

On second thought, let’s not.

(via Neatorama)

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