Could A Cure For MRSA Be In A Medieval Anglo-Saxon Text?

Our elders have always told us that the old ways–and the old remedies–are often superior to all of our new drugs and techniques for fighting disease. Turns out they were right.

medieval med text
Image Via The British Museum

Microbiologists in the United Kingdom have discovered what may be the cure for a modern-day “superbug,”?methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).?The source for this miracle drug? A thousand year old Anglo-Saxon medical text entitled “Bald’s Leechbook.”

The recipe found in the medieval text was found and first tested by?Freya Harrison, a microbiologist at the University of Nottingham. It called for, among other things:

“Take cropleek and garlic, of both equal quantities, pound them well together? take wine and bullocks gall, mix with the leek? let it stand nine days in the brass vessel?”

Cropleek is a variety of onion, garlic is used in everyday cooking, and wine, well wine is often served alongside dishes containing leeks and garlic. Who knew the cure for MRSA had been sitting on a shelf in the British Museum?for hundreds of years?

MRSA is?an antibiotic-resistant version of the bacteria that causes styes and it often flourishes in hospital environments.?The potion compounded by Harrison killed 90 per cent of the bacteria in lab tests.?Vancomycin, the antibiotic doctors usually generally prescribe for MRSA, killed about the same proportion in a laboratory setting.

The only side-effect of the concoction, Harrison says, is that it made the lab smell like garlic:

“It was not unpleasant. It’s all edible stuff. Everyone thought we were making lunch.”

Instead, they may very well have been making medical and pharmacological history.

Harrison will present her research?at the Society for General Microbiology conference in Birmingham, England, later this week. And her discovery may also lead to future cures for modern ailments by using knowledge and medicines that have existed for centuries.