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| MRSA attacks a human cell. The bacteria shown is the strain MRSA 252, a leading cause of hospital-associated infections. (Rocky Mountain Laboratories, NIAID, NIH) |
Excerpt from washingtonpost.com
The superbug, which is resistant to conventional antibiotics because of their overuse, shrugs at even the deadliest weapons modern medicine offers. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated MRSA contributed to the deaths of more than 5,000 people in the United States in 2013. It even attacked the NFL, and some say it could eventually kill more people than cancer. And presidential commissions have advised that technological progress is the only way to fight MRSA.
But researchers in the United Kingdom now report that the superbug proved vulnerable to an ancient remedy. The ingredients? Just a bit of garlic, some onion or leek, copper, wine and oxgall — a florid name for cow’s bile.
This medicine sounds yucky, but it’s definitely better than the bug it may be able to kill.
“We were absolutely blown away by just how effective the combination of ingredients was,” Freya Harrison of the University of Nottingham, who worked on the research, told the BBC.
The oxgall remedy, billed as an eye salve, was found in a manuscript written in Old English from the 10th century called “Bald’s Leechbook” — a sort of pre-Magna Carta physician’s desk reference. Garlic and copper are commonly thought to have antibiotic or antimicrobial properties, but seeing such ingredients in a home remedy at Whole Foods is a far cry from researchers killing a superbug with it.
According to Christina Lee, an associate professor in Viking studies at Nottingham, the MRSA research was the product of conversations among academics of many stripes interested in infectious disease and how people fought it before antibiotics.
“We were talking about the specter of antibiotic resistance,” she told The Washington Post in a phone interview. The medical researchers involved in the discussions said to the medievalists: “In your period, you guys must have had something.”
Not every recipe in Bald’s Leechbook is a gem. Other advice, via a translation from the Eastern Algo-Saxonist: “Against a woman’s chatter; taste at night fasting a root of radish, that day the chatter cannot harm thee.” And: “In case a man be a lunatic; take skin of a mereswine or porpoise, work it into a whip, swinge the man therewith, soon he will be well. Amen.”
Though the Leechbook may include misses, it may help doctors find a solution to a problem that only seems to be getting worse.
If the oxgall remedy proves effective against MRSA outside of the lab — which researchers caution it may not — it would be a godsend. Case studies of MRSA’s impact from the CDC’s charmingly named Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report seem medieval.
“In July 1997, a 7-year-old black girl from urban Minnesota was admitted to a tertiary-care hospital with a temperature of 103 F.” Result: Death from pulmonary hemorrhage after five weeks of hospitalization.
“In January 1998, a 16-month-old American Indian girl from rural North Dakota was taken to a local hospital in shock and with a temperature of 105.2 F.” Result: After respiratory failure and cardiac arrest, death within two hours of hospital admission.
“In January 1999, a 13-year-old white girl from rural Minnesota was brought to a local hospital with fever, hemoptysis” — that’s coughing up blood — “and respiratory distress.” The result: Death from multiple organ failure after seven days in the hospital.
“We believe modern research into disease can benefit from past responses and knowledge, which is largely contained in non-scientific writings,” Lee told the Telegraph. “But the potential of these texts to contribute to addressing the challenges cannot be understood without the combined expertise of both the arts and science.”
Lee stressed that it was the combination of ingredients that proved effective against MRSA — which shows that people living in medieval times were not as barbaric as popularly thought. Even 1,000 years ago, when people got sick, other people tried to figure out how to help.
“We associate ‘medieval’ with dark, barbaric,” Lee said. “… It’s not. I’ve always believed in the pragmatic medieval ages.”
The research will be presented at the Annual Conference of the Society for General Microbiology in Birmingham. In an abstract for the conference, the team cautioned oxgall was no cure-all.
“Antibacterial activity of a substance in laboratory trials does not necessarily mean the historical remedy it was taken from actually worked in toto,” they wrote.
Lee said researchers hope to turn to other remedies in Bald’s Leechbook — including purported cures for headaches and ulcers — to see what other wisdom the ancients have to offer.
“At a time when you don’t have microscope, medicine would have included things we find rather odd,” she said. “In 200 years, people will judge us.”
A Message about the Gathering by Aisha North
By Aisha North
aishanorth.wordpress.com
A message about the Gathering
Dear friends!
Earlier today, I posted a short comment about how I felt the need to withdraw and try to take in all that has happened in the last 24 hours, but the CCs thought otherwise… They were very insistent that I should sit down and take in this message from them, and that I needed to share it as soon as possible. For some reason, they did not want me to include it as a part of The manuscript, but post it as a separate message, and so here it is:
“Dear friends, beloved family, for that is truly what you all are. And after last night’s intense reconnection, we gather that many of you can truly feel into the truth of this for the very first time. We know you have waited so long for this, but finally we can say, in the knowledge that you hearts are at last able to savour these swords: welcome home, beloved angels of light. For not only are you angels in the realms you have come from, but now, you also know that you are the same, infinite beings of light down on Earth also. For you have seen yourselves in all of your splendor, just as we see you when we gaze fondly upon you. We thank you all for opening your hearts fully to this truth, as for so many, the doors have been sealed closed in a way that made it hard to fathom they would ever open again. But last night they did, and the doors were not only opened, they were litterally flung off the hinges, for they will never be able to close again.
For once you have allowed the pristine light to touch your very core, and once you have truly allowed yourself to be loved by YOU, it will never ever go away. So again we thank each and every one of you for your courage, your wisdom, your beauty and your infinite light. You all walk in splendor now, dear ones, splendor you have earned with every tear, every parting pain, every sorrow that has ever befallen you on this earthly sojourn. For know now that you have been fully awakened from your sleep, and just like sleeping beauty, Mother Earth has been awakened alongside you. So rest today dear ones, and try to get your bearings back, for we venture to guess you may feel somewhat befuddled after this energetic awakening and rebirth. For you have all been born again, into a body that may still feel rather battered and bruised at times, but it is a body that has been totally reprogrammed in a way that will benefit not only yourself, but your benevolent Mother also. For the planet you walk upon will be nourished by every step you take from now on, for through your veins courses the very lifeblood she needs in order for her to beat as strongly again as she once did.
So take it slow, and give yourself the time you need in order to step fully into your new shoes. They may seem to be overly large for you at the moment, but we have no doubts at all as to your ability to fill them. For you will walk with even more presence on this land from now on, and so many will begin to follow in your footsteps. Because they will be drawn to you, and to this brand new energy you all exhude, amd through this, the exodus from the old density will truly begin. For you have cleared yourselves from all of the old dross, and now, the time has come for you to form that vantage point, the spearhead, and blaze a shining trail for everyone keen to do the same. So again we thank you all for what you are, and for what you have let yourself become. For you have truly become yourselves now, in every nuance and every aspect, and so we greet you all as equals. It is indeed something you have always been, but now, you have finally started to see the same for yourselves, and that gladdens us to no end.
Thank you, that will be all for today, but we will return with more as the days go by and your lights start to shine even stronger. Thank you, we leave.”
With much love, joy and gratitude from me, Aisha
(And now, I will take a short break… :–) )