Anglo-Saxon recipe vanquishes MRSA

摘要

Take cropleek and garlic, of both equal quantities, pound them well together... take wine and bullocks gall, mixwith theleek... letitstand ninedaysin the brass vessel... So goes a 1000-year-old Anglo-Saxon remedy for treating a stye, an infected eyelash follicle. The medieval medics may have been on to something. A modern-day recreation seems to alleviate infections caused by the bacteria responsible for styes. The work might ultimately help create drugs for hard-to-treat skin infections. The project started when Freya Harrison, a microbiologist at the University of Nottingham, UK, got talking to Christina Lee, an Anglo-Saxon scholar. They decided to test a recipe from an Old English medical compendium called Bald's Leechbook. Some of the ingredients, such as copper from the brass vessel, are known to kill bacteria grown in a dish, but it was unclear if they would work on a real infection.