A 1000-year-old Anglo-Saxon recipe for eye stys in Bald’s Leechbook directs the reader to take the ingredients and “pound them well together” before letting them stew for nine days. A group from Nottingham University followed Bald’s recipe and their close attention to the medieval text paid off when they saw that the garlicky slime produced by their efforts killed 90% of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus(MRSA) on scraps of infected mouse skin – a similar percentage as Vancomycin, the go-to antibiotic for MRSA.

A story that mixes the modern threat of MRSA with an ointment recipe that seems to have been written by Macbeth’s Weird Sisters is bound to capture one’s attention. Unsurprisingly, the media has been quick to characterize the ointment as the solution to MRSA, but from a drug development standpoint there are a few hurdles that need to be overcome. For one, how the ointment works against MRSA is not known and future studies will have to focus on elucidating its active compounds. Furthermore, as Dr. John Rex points out, the medieval ointment is “unlikely to ever yield anything other than a topic agent” (that is, a drug applied to one’s skin) and, while important, this would not be useful in the fight against the more common invasive MRSA infections that occur in hospital settings.

Despite the probably limited medical potential of the drug in dealing with invasive MRSA infections, the “resurrection” of a medieval ointment adds a glimmer of hope for future antibiotic discovery. It demonstrates that there are still efficient antibiotic compounds to be discovered as well as showing the potential of collaborative research, even between seemingly disparate areas such as Nottingham University’s Anglo-Saxon and molecular biology experts.

Acknowledgements: Special thanks to Dr. John Rex, Senior VP and Head of Infection at AstraZeneca, for his expert opinion on the drug developmental potential of Bald’s ointment; and Tracy Kambara, a graduate student in the Biological and Biomedical Sciences (BBS) program at Harvard, for her expert comments on the discovery.

Managing Correspondent: Fernanda Ferreira

Original Abstract: A 1,000-year-old antimicrobial remedy with antistaphylococcal activity (page 89 of the Abstracts Book for the Society for General Microbiology’s Annual Conference 2015)

Other Media Coverage: Anglo-Saxon cow bile and garlic potion kills MRSA

Related SITN Article: The Arms Race Between Germs and Medicine: How Superbugs Have Taken the Lead, and How Humans Can Take It Back