Curious Cures From History
By Angela Porter
The world around us is a giant first aid cabinet, if we only knew how to use it. There are plants which can cure cancer and fungi that produce antibiotics, even armadillos can help us fight leprosy. However, to try and investigate everything living thing would be a gargantuan task.Fortunately, there is a little-tapped barrel of wisdom we can draw from; our forebears knew a lot more than maybe they are given credit for, passing on much of their knowledge orally. What survives of this oral tradition is dying out, though there are echoes of what was once known in a few important texts from times past.
In recent years, science has returned to the natural world to search for new ways of treating our ills. The grand and fancy names of ethnobotany, ethnomedicine and ethnopharmacology now give a much more scientific name to plant lore.
Scientists, at last, have understood that this ‘plant lore’ is a source of the largest empirical study of plants and their effects ever undertaken and that it warrants a closer look. I don’t think a medicine-man outfit will be replacing the white lab-coat any time soon, but the old books are at least being reopened.
Here are just a few curious cures from the ancients - some which we now know to be medically sound and others we really should leave in the past!
The Pharaohs’ Pharmaceuticals
The Ancient Egyptians were the first people to start recording their medical wonders. Papyri dating back to 2000 to 1600 BCE contain everything from the weird to the wonderful. For example, how about this:
With advice like this is it any wonder traditional practices were ridiculed. This is definitely one best left alone! However, a similarly ridiculous sounding cure for cataracts shouldn’t be so lightly tossed aside.
I’m not sure how the brain would help and I’d be particularly suspicious about using a variation that contained human brains. Furthermore, prayer isn’t generally thought of as a top medical practice these days. But the honey part, now that’s a different story.
The Egyptians used honey to dress wounds as well as treat illnesses of the eye, for sore throats and digestive ailments. Modern clinical trials have found honey really does help. It is a natural antibiotic and it helps heal infected wounds stopping the advance of infection. In the lab, honey has even been shown to be effective against MRSA. It reduces inflammation, speeds up the healing process, and often there is little or no scarring in even serious wounds, negating the need for plastic surgery. Positive results have also been found in the use of honey to treat eye infections. So, I think we can chalk that one up as a success for the Egyptians.
The Ancient Egyptians also used to apply mouldy bread to open wounds to prevent infections. We now know that one of the moulds present produces penicillin naturally – but it took nearly 4,000 years for science to work that out. So that’s another one to chalk up to the Pharaonic physicians.
Hippocratic Headache PillsHippocrates was a Greek physician who lived around 400 BCE. He is referred to as the Father of Medicine and is credited as being the first physician to reject the superstitions and beliefs that the Gods caused illness.
One of Hippocrates’ remedies was the prescription of the bark and leaves of the willow tree to relieve pain and fever, a cure which was still going strong two thousand years later.
In 1763, Reverend Edward Stone from Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire, noted the effectiveness of willow in bringing down a fever, showing how Hippocrates’s prescription was used for centuries.
It was early in the nineteenth century that salicylic acid was first isolated from willow and meadowsweet, another folk remedy, and identified as a useful ingredient. Salicylic acid subsequently was used as a pain reliever, but had unfortunate side effects such as bleeding, gastric irritation, and even death if given in large enough amounts.
In 1853 a French scientist, Charles Frederic Gerhardt, produced acetyl salicylic acid for the first time. This was eventually marketed by the german pharmaceutical company Bayer under the trade name of Aspirin: A- for acetyl, -spir- from the Latin name for meadowsweet, and -in just because that was a common ending for drugs at the time.
So, Hippocrates wasn’t barking up the wrong tree all those years ago! I think I’ll award one point each to Hippocrates, Rev. Stone, and Gerhardt.
The Medieval Myddfai
Rhiwallon and his sons lived during the thirteenth century in Myddfai, West Wales. They were physicians to a warrior named Rhys Gryg and meticulously recorded a collection of useful medical treatments that dated back hundreds, if not thousands, of years.
The Red Book of Hengest, now kept in Jesus College Oxford, is one copy of their collection, which contains suggestions for treatments for all kinds of medical problems, including ones that were of a, err, delicate nature; anal warts for instance:
Owch!!! But there's that super sticky sweet stuff again – honey to help the healing. Clever little buzzers those bees! Once you'd had your anal warts removed, you'd need some help to sleep. The Myddfai had the answer for that too:
This recipe is very similar to the ‘liquid laudanum’ prepared by the seventeenth century British physician Thomas Sydenham. He introduced the use of opium into medical practice; opiate painkillers are still very important in medicine today.
The legacy of the Myddfai lives on in modern times. It's no coincidence that just a day's walk west of the village of Myddfai lies the National Botanic Garden of Wales (NBGW). The NBGW is home to an exhibition about the Myddfai as well as having an apothecaries garden and a bee garden too. I think that's another two points to the ancients!
Renaissance recipes
The use of herbal remedies carried on unabated through the centuries, after all people had no modern drugs to rely on.
The rich Harbord family had owned the Gunton Estate in Norfolk since the 1670s. Members of the family kept the Gunton Household book during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It now resides in the church of St Peter Mancroft in Norwich, England. Inside can be found a host of recipes; one particularly eye-catching one is this:
The periwinkle belongs to the plant genus Vinca from which the vinca-alkaloids are nowadays extracted. These are used in the modern day treatment of childhood leukaemia, arteriosclerosis and even some types of dementia. What a good thing science has winkled those chemicals out!
So that, I think, can be counted as one more to our ancestors.
What’s next for traditional remedies?
It’s true that there are some very bizarre remedies in the old records, but there are also some gems too - gems that have led to medical breakthroughs. Over the past decade drug companies have been spending ever increasing amounts of money investigating the ingredients of folk remedies all around the world, looking for new and exciting drugs. I wonder if they’ve tested that tortoise brain yet...
For some final pearls of wisdom I’ll leave you to the Physicians of Myddfai:
If you enjoyed this you would probably like Richard Mabey's fantastic book Flora Britannica. Alternatively you can get more from the Null's medicine cabinet here:
- Interesting - Is it the end of the road for antibiotics?
- Scary - How health food can make you fatter
- Would you? I wouldn't - Jab away that flab
- Would you? Probably - Cure for ADHD discovered
Image: Tinpalace
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