An Anglo-Saxon medical textbook Bald's Leechbook may have the right recipe for killing methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) hidden between its covers.
The stomach-churning potion, which includes wine, garlic, and bile from a cow's stomach, could hold the key to defeating MRSA came about after a chance discussion between experts at the University of Nottingham in 2014, the Independent reported.
Lead researcher Freya Harrison from the University of Nottingham said that the thousand-year-old remedy has proven to be an "incredibly potent" antibiotic.
The individual ingredients alone did not have any measurable effect but when combined according to the ancient text, they killed up to 90 per cent of MRSA bacteria in infected mice and in infections grown in the laboratory, only about one bacterial cell in a thousand survived.
Harrison added that this one thousand year old antibiotic actually seems to be working really well, when they got the first results they were just utterly dumbfounded as they did not see this coming at all.
Kendra Rumbaugh, a microbiologist at Texas Tech University who was part of the research team, commented that these types of wound infections are very difficult to treat, and given that most of the agents they have previously tested displayed little to no efficacy.
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Rumbaugh added that however, this 'ancient' solution performed better than the current 'gold standard' (vancomycin) and killed more than 90 percent of the MRSA in the wounds.
Recipe to treat a stye, translated from Bald's Leechbook states "Work and eye salve for a wen, take cropleek and garlic, of both equal quantities, pound them well together, take wine and bullocks gall, of both equal quantities, mix with a leek, put this then into a brazen vessel, let it stand nine days in the brass vessel, wring out through a cloth and clear it well, put it into a horn, and about night time apply with a feather to the eye; the best leechdom.