Scientists stumble upon cure for MRSA infections in 1,000-year-old book of natural remedies

At the University of Nottingham in Britain, researchers have rediscovered an ancient medicinal elixir that appears to fight a very modern scourge: a deadly drug-resistant bacterial infection rampant in hospitals.

The discovery melds medieval potion-making with modern pharmacology. In its crosshairs: Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, better known as MRSA.

Let's imagine that during a nighttime escape through Sherwood Forest, an early archetype for the legendary figure Robin Hood scratched his cornea on a branch and developed an eye infection. In nearby Nottingham, he might well have consulted an herbalist, who would fetch a brass vessel, brew a remedy of bile from a cow's stomach and Allium - a plant from the garlic family - and create an unguent to treat the patient's inflamed eye.

Until recently, the recipe for that medieval remedy lay unnoticed in the brittle pages of a 1,000-year-old text - titled Bald's Leechbook - shelved in the library of the University of Nottingham's Institute for Medieval Research.

Leafing through that folio, Viking studies professor Christina Lee wondered what its ancient recipes revealed about the state of medieval medical knowledge, and whether and how, a millennium before the germ theory of disease was understood, healers and herbalists had guessed right.

Lee translated the recipe for the eye salve from the original Old English recipe in Bald's Leechbook, and enlisted chemists at her university's Centre for Biomolecular Sciences to recreate the unguent and test its effect.

Lee's request came at a crucial time. With a paucity of new antimicrobial medications in the development pipeline, Nottingham microbiologist Freya Harrison was looking for inspiration. Lee's idea might allow her team to reach deep into the past in search of undiscovered or underappreciated antimicrobial agents.