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A Reassessment of the Efficacy of Anglo-Saxon Medicine
Abstract
Laboratory in vitro testing of various remedies from the Old English Leechbooks and Lacnunga does not support previous assertions that Anglo-Saxon medical remedies would have been efficacious. For example, the remedy for a stye in the eye takes ingredients that individually have anti-bacterial properties and compounds them into a mixture with no effect on common bacteria. We conclude that Anglo-Saxon remedies were not likely to have cured the ailments for which they were prescribed and that researchers, rather than asserting the probable prowess of the Anglo-Saxon læce, should instead focus on what people in the time period believed would have helped them.
... If different studies already highlighted some interest in studying past remedies or highlighted antibiotic use from past records, i.e. [33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40] , the consideration of these past remedies as a reservoir of pertinent strategies to combat infection would require more complex and coordinated strategies, involving intense collaboration between art, social and experimental sciences. ...
The proliferation and prevalence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria despite modern medicine is considered as one of the most alarming threats to global health. The fear that antibiotics that work today might not work tomorrow makes it imperative to search and develop novel drugs or therapeutic strategies to fight against micro-organisms resistant to our current approaches. From many centuries, people have sought solutions to combat infections and proposed countless remedies, traces of which can be found in manuscripts preserved over the past centuries. The re-examination and exploitation of these ancient remedies might be a key to a vast pool of potential therapeutic strategies or drug candidates against antibiotic-resistant pathogens. This, however, would first require the consideration of these ancient solutions as scientifically pertinent leads for new therapies. The aim of this review is to highlight arguments in favor of a rationality in the scientific approach of these past physicians as well as of a medicinal interest in studying these ancient pharmacopeias. To narrow the scope of our research, we focused on the Arab Medieval Golden Medical Age, which inspired occidental medicine hundreds of years after its preeminence. We further highlight the possibility of integrating this knowledge into innovative, modern therapeutic approaches.
... Этот лечебник получил свое название из-за колофона, написанного латинским гекзаметром, который расположен в завершении второй книги. В колофоне есть указание на предполагаемого владельца книги Болда и Килда, которому поручили ее написать 4 . Некоторые ученые имеют тенденцию хвалить интеллектуальный уровень Bald's Leechbook и компетенцию ее составителя, который обращался к широкому спектру латинских и византийских источников, таких как "Синопсис" Орибасия, "Практика Александра" (включения из работ медиков Филагрия, Филомена, Александра Траллийского), "О лекарствах" Маркелла 5 . ...
Old English medicine, reflected in the totality of medical texts compiled in Anglo-Saxon, serves as a unique synthesis of early medieval cultural and religious ideas. The herbalist Leechbook III is one of the most representative sources on the history of Old English medicine. The analysis of the text allows us to highlight the principles that formed the basis of medical practice in Anglo-Saxon England. Through the prism of this medical essay, the researcher also gets the opportunity to look at the features of the religious worldview of the Anglo-Saxons.
... The limited availability of medieval medical texts, as well as the constraints of researchers mining these texts by hand, has thus far meant that ethnopharmacological research conducted on medieval European medicine has concentrated on single specific ingredients (e.g., a body of literature on Plantago spp. [33][34][35]) or single recipes from select medieval texts (3,36). The use of digital technologies to turn these texts into databases amenable to quantitative data mining requires a careful interdisciplinary approach, but it could provide a new perspective on medieval science. ...
The pharmacopeia used by physicians and laypeople in medieval Europe has largely been dismissed as placebo or superstition. While we now recognize that some of the materia medica used by medieval physicians could have had useful biological properties, research in this area is limited by the labor-intensive process of searching and interpreting historical medical texts. Here, we demonstrate the potential power of turning medieval medical texts into contextualized electronic databases amenable to exploration by the use of an algorithm. We used established methodologies from network science to reveal patterns in ingredient selection and usage in a key text, the 15th-century Lylye of Medicynes , focusing on remedies to treat symptoms of microbial infection. In providing a worked example of data-driven textual analysis, we demonstrate the potential of this approach to encourage interdisciplinary collaboration and to shine a new light on the ethnopharmacology of historical medical texts.
IMPORTANCE We used established methodologies from network science to identify patterns in medicinal ingredient combinations in a key medieval text, the 15th-century Lylye of Medicynes , focusing on recipes for topical treatments for symptoms of microbial infection. We conducted experiments screening the antimicrobial activity of selected ingredients. These experiments revealed interesting examples of ingredients that potentiated or interfered with each other’s activity and that would be useful bases for future, more detailed experiments. Our results highlight (i) the potential to use methodologies from network science to analyze medieval data sets and detect patterns of ingredient combination, (ii) the potential of interdisciplinary collaboration to reveal different aspects of the ethnopharmacology of historical medical texts, and (iii) the potential development of novel therapeutics inspired by premodern remedies in a time of increased need for new antibiotics.
... The team found that a 9-day latency was superior to a 5-day latency, but the use of the brass vessel was irrelevant. These results are surprising, not least because a decade earlier Brennessel, Drout, & Gravel, (2005) concluded, with reference to the same recipe, that "some of the Anglo-Saxon recipes take biologically efficacious ingredients and process them into ineffective mixtures" (pp. 184) ...
Humans have created and maintained an exponentially large and sophisticated behavioral corpus over evolutionary time. In no small part this was achieved due to our tendency to imitate behaviours rather than to emulate outcomes. This tendency, however, can lead to inefficiency and redundancy in our behavioral repertoires. Drawing on evidence from multiple fields of psychology, we propose two novel competing hypotheses. The 'catalyst hypothesis' suggests that low (but not high) proportions of ritualized gesture in instrumental action sequences will improve subsequent recall of the entire action sequence (without itself enhancing the instrumental utility of the sequence). Conversely, the 'cost hypothesis' suggests that increasing proportions of ritualized gesture will impair recall, due to the introduction of cognitive load. The null hypothesis states that ritualized gestures are neither beneficial nor costly. In a pre-registered experiment, we presented participants with multiple versions of two complicated 2-min action sequences in which we varied the proportion of ritualized gesture. We then quantified the influence ritualized gesture had on recall for individuals gestures, overall outcomes, and described detail. We found clear evidence that high proportions of ritualized gestures impair recall for individual gestures and overall success, and weak evidence that low proportions increase overall success. At present, we may reject the null, but cannot rule out either of our competing hypotheses. We discuss potential implications for cultural evolution, and generate competing predictions that allow for adjudication between Ritual Modes theory (Whitehouse, 2004) and the 'Cognitive Resource Depletion' account of Religious Interaction (Schjoedt et al., 2013). All files (including data and syntax) are freely available at https://osf.io/spz68/.
... One project, for instance, is a 26 Cameron (1993), p. 129. 27 Cf. B. Brennessel, M. Drout and R. Gravel (2005), 'A Reassessment of the Efficacy of Anglo-Saxon Medicine', Anglo-Saxon England 34, pp. 183-195. ...
This thesis examines concepts of disease existing in the Anglo-Saxon period. The focus is in particular on the conceptual intricacies pertaining to pestilence or, in modern terms, epidemic disease. The aim is to (1) establish the different aspects of the cognitive conceptualisation and their representation in the language and (2) to illustrate how they are placed in relation to other concepts within a broader understanding of the world. The scope of this study encompasses the entire corpus of Old English literature, select Latin material produced in Anglo-Saxon England, as well as prominent sources including works by Isidore of Seville, Gregory of Tours, and Pope Gregory the Great. An introductory survey of past scholarship identifies main tenets of research and addresses shortcomings in our understanding of historic depictions of epidemic disease, that is, a lack of appreciation for the dynamics of the human mind. The main body of research will discuss the topic on a lexico-semantic, contextual and wider cultural level. An electronic evaluation of the Dictionary of Old English Corpus establishes the most salient semantic fields surrounding instances of cwealm and wol (‘pestilence’), such as harmful entities, battle and warfare, sin, punishment, and atmospheric phenomena. Occurrences of pestilential disease are distributed across a variety of text types including (medical) charms, hagiographic and historiographic literature, homilies, and scientific, encyclopaedic treatises. The different contexts highlight several distinguishable aspects of disease, (‘reason’, ‘cause’, ‘symptoms’, ‘purpose’, and ‘treatment’) and strategically put them in relation with other concepts. Connections within this conceptual network can be based on co-occurrence, causality, and analogy and are set within a wider cultural frame informed largely though not exclusively by Christian doctrine. The thesis concludes that Anglo-Saxon ideas of disease must be viewed as part of a complex web of knowledge and beliefs in order to understand how they can be framed by various discourses with more or less diverging objectives. The overall picture emerging from this study, while certainly not being free from contradiction, is not one of superstition and ignorance but is grounded in observation and integrated into many-layered systems of cultural knowledge.
... 20 21 The limited availability of medieval medical texts, as well as the constraints of researchers mining 22 these texts by hand, has thus far meant that ethnopharmacological research conducted on 23 medieval European medicine has concentrated on single specific ingredients (e.g. a body of 24 literature on Plantago spp. 33,34,35 ), or single recipes from select medieval texts 3,36 . The use of 25 digital technologies to turn these texts into databases amenable to quantitative datamining 26 requires a careful interdisciplinary approach, but it could provide an entirely new perspective on 27 medieval science and rationality. ...
The pharmacopeia used by physicians and lay people in medieval Europe has largely been dismissed as placebo or superstition. While we now recognise that some of the materia medica used by medieval physicians could have had useful biological properties, research in this area is limited by the labour-intensive process of searching and interpreting historical medical texts. Here, we demonstrate the potential power of turning medieval medical texts into contextualised electronic databases amenable to exploration by algorithm. We use established methodologies from network science to reveal statistically significant patterns in ingredient selection and usage in a key text, the fifteenth-century Lylye of Medicynes, focusing on remedies to treat symptoms of microbial infection. We discuss the potential that these patterns reflect rational medical decisions. In providing a worked example of data-driven textual analysis, we demonstrate the potential of this approach to encourage interdisciplinary collaboration and to shine a new light on the ethnopharmacology of historical medical texts.
An ontological approach to medieval archaeobotany could assist in uncovering otherwise obscure evidence of complex human-plant interactions. In particular, archaeobotanical remains could contribute more toward research on medieval medicine and understandings of human and environmental health. This article considers ways in which current archaeobotanical methods and practices may be limiting interpretations of medieval plant remains. We argue that increased immersion in both ontological and sedimentary contexts can improve archaeobotanical research by integrating plant remains with other archaeological and textual evidence. We offer an interdisciplinary theoretical and methodological framework toward broadening the interpretative scope of medieval archaeobotanical datasets, with an emphasis on humoral and spiritual ontologies.
This article considers how disability affects women in early medieval England through an examination of the word, “unhælu,” a term that means unhealthy, but could refer to many different maladies that could constitute a disability. Women were particularly susceptible to unhælu due to the effects of poor nutrition and infection during childbirth and menstruation, and women’s unhælu could be treated through their reproductive organs, even for unrelated ailments. For instance, a lack of speech could be remedied with a pessary and an emmenagogue. Social status played a large role in how being unhælu affected a woman’s life, as a rich woman could pay for care and transportation, rather than relying on family. In religious contexts, being unhælu could have advantages, particularly if it made it possible to transcend corporality and to preserve virginity.
In this study fresh juice of 17 plants were prepared and tested for inhibition of bacteria and yeasts in culture media. Garlic was the most inhibitory plant on the bacteria. Onion, leek, red pepper, garden radish and horse radish inhibited the growth of one to three bacteria. Other plant juice did not inhibit the growth of tested bacteria. Garlic, onion, dill and cabbage juice inhibited the growth of all 10 yeasts. Leek and peppermint juice were the least inhibiting plants on the tested yeasts. ÖZET Bu çalışmada 17 değişik bitkiden elde edilen extrenin kültür ortamında bakteri ve mayalar üzerindeki inhibitör etkisi test edilmiştir. Bakteriler üzerinde en yüksek inhibitör aktivite gösteren bitkinin sarmısak olduğu belirlenmiştir. Soğan, pırasa, kırmızı biber, bahçe turpu ve yaban turpu 1-3 bakteri türü üzerinde inhibitör etki göstermiştir. Diğer bitki extreleri (lahana, nane, dereotu ve maydanoz) test edilen bakterilerde inhibisyon oluşturmamıştır. Sarmısak, soğan (1 ve 2), dereotu ve lahana extreleri test edilen tüm mayaların gelişimini inhibe etmiştir. Test edilen mayalar üzerinde en düşük inhibitör etkiye ise pırasa, bahçe turpu ve nane extrelerinin sahip olduğu belirlenmiştir. INTRODUCTION Many of the plants used today were known to the people of ancient cultures throughout the world and they were valued their preservative and medicinal powers. Scientific experiments on the antimicrobial properties of plants and their components have been documented in the late 19 th century (1).
To test whether red and white wines are as potent as bismuth salicylate against the bacteria responsible for traveller's diarrhoea to try to explain wine's legendary reputation as a digestive aid.
Red and white wine, bismuth salicylate, two solutions containing ethanol (diluted absolute ethanol and tequila), and sterilised water were tested against suspensions of salmonella, shigella, and Escherichia coli to determine relative antibacterial activity. Suspensions of 10(7) colony forming units of shigella, salmonella, and E coli were added to the test solutions and plated on standard nutrient agar at 0, 10, 20, 30, 60, and 120 minutes and 24 hours. Dilutions of wine and bismuth salicylate were then tested with E coli as the test bacterium, and the experiment repeated.
Exposure times necessary for eradication of organisms for the different solutions; decreases in colony counts at the different exposure times for dilutions of wine and bismuth salicylates.
Undiluted wine and bismuth salicylate were both effective in reducing the number of viable organisms (by 10(5)-10(6) colony forming units) after 20-30 minutes. Dilutions of wine were much more effective in decreasing colony counts than were similar dilutions of bismuth salicylate.
The antibacterial property of wine is largely responsible for wine's reputation as a digestive aid.
Professor R. Pleiner of the Institute of Archaeology, Prague, who has provided this review of Dr Tylecote’s book, is one of theforemost authorities on the origins of ironmaking. He is Secretary of the Comite pour la Siderurgie Ancienne de I’Union Internationale des Sciences Prehistoriques et Protohistoriques, whose offices are also in Prague. Professor Pleiner has made a special study of replica-smelting of early furnaces and some of his recent publications include ‘Metallographic report on early iron artefacts’ (Stockholm, 1975), ‘Origins of the shaft furnace in European ironmaking’ (Prague, 1975),!‘Ironmaking in pre-medieval Central Europe’ (Miinster, 1975), ‘The problem of the beginningof the iron age in India’ (Berlin, 1972), ‘Forging and blacksmiths’ art in Moravia’ (Krakow, i971), ‘Experimental smelting of steel in early medievalfurnaces’ (Prague, 1969), ‘The beginnings of the iron age in ancient Persia’ (Prague, 1967), and ‘The work of the early European smith’ (Prague, 1962).
Over a hundred years ago, T. O. Cockayne published his Leechdoms, Wortcunning and Starcraft of Early England, in which he edited the texts of all the medical writings in Old English he could find. It is massive in its scope, and no modern scholar is ever likely to produce its equal. Yet we, metaphorically standing on Cockaynes's shoulders, and equipped with aids provided by more recent research, are able to examine more closely than he could some of the special features of the field which he revealed to us. Its English substrata have been comparatively neglected, however, and therefore I propose in this paper to examine closely the relationships of the hundred or so medical remedies in Old English which have been preserved – usually in different manuscripts – in two or three versions so close that it is obvious, even on a superficial view, that they either derive from the same English original, or are copied the one from the other. These remedies usually begin by specifying the ailment for which they are recommended, and then go on to set out the ingredients and method of making the appropriate herbal concoction. Nearly all the repeated remedies are found at least once in the Leechbook manuscript, now London, British Library, Royal 12. D. xvii, and so I will begin by describing it, and use it as the basis of the argument. Then I will describe briefly in turn the other manuscripts in which the remedies are found, discussing as I proceed those with minor parallels to Bald's Leechbook; and then, separately and in detail, the important duplications in the two final manuscripts under consideration. It may thereafter be possible to draw some conclusions about the method of compilation of Bald's Leechbook.
In this study, the focus was on the antibacterial activity of onions. This study researched the activities of onion extracts on Streptococcus mutans and Streptococcus sobrinus, the main causal bacteria for dental caries, and Porphyromonas gingivalis and Prevotella intermedia, considered to be the main causal bacteria of adult periodontitis. The results showed that the onion extracts possess an effect on all test bacterial strains (S.mutans JC-2, S. sobrinus OMZ176, P. gingivalis ATCC 33277 and P. intermedia ATCC 25611), and the effects were bactericidal against cultured and resting bacterial cells. The activity of the onion extracts was stable even after 48 hours in the culture medium. This result suggests that no decomposition or volatility of onion extracts occurred in the culture medium. The antibacterial activity of onion extracts was not markedly influenced by cysteine (10 mM) treatment. However, activity significantly decreased with alkali treatment. Grated onion left to stand at 37 degrees C for 48 hours did not show antibacterial activity. Also, activity of steam treated (100 degrees C, 10 min.) onion was not observed. Using avicel plate by thin layer chromatography with the solvent of n-butanol:acetic acid:water (3:3:1), the main component of the substance (the substance which develops color with ninhydrin) was observed at an Rf value of about 0.9.
Louis Pasteur was the first to describe the antibacterial effect of onion and garlic juices. Historically, garlic has been used worldwide to fight bacterial infections. Allium vegetables, particularly garlic (Allium sativum L.) exhibit a broad antibiotic spectrum against both gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria. Noteworthy results published include the following: 1) raw juice of garlic was found to be effective against many common pathogenic bacteria-intestinal bacteria, which are responsible for diarrhea in humans and animals; 2) garlic is effective even against those strains that have become resistant to antibiotics; 3) the combination of garlic with antibiotics leads to partial or total synergism; 4) complete lack of resistance has been observed repeatedly; 5) even toxin production by microorganisms is prevented by garlic. Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) is a bacterium implicated in the etiology of stomach cancer and ulcers. The incidence of stomach cancer is lower in populations with a high intake of allium vegetables. We have demonstrated in vitro that H. pylori is susceptible to garlic extract at a fairly moderate concentration. Even some antibiotic-resistant H. pylori strains are susceptible to garlic. Clinical trials are necessary to explore the possibility of using garlic as a low-cost remedy for eradicating H. pylori.
When J. R. R. Tolkein criticized the critics of Beowulf , it was because ‘Beowulf has been used as a quarry of fact and fancy far more assiduously than it has been studied as a work of art.’ The Old English medical documents have suffered from a similar treament in that critics have rarely dealt with them primarily as medical documents. So far as I know, none of them has been criticized primarily as a medical work, to the extent that its recipes and remedies have been evaluated for their usefulness as medical treatments. But they have been searched, discussed, emended and evaluated as sources for the study of paganism, magic, superstitions, Christianity and the influence of Christian and Latin culture on the primitive beliefs of the Teutonic peoples, and as indicators of the spread of Greek and Latin science among the Northern peoples. Yet they were all originally conceived, used and finally preserved in writing as medical documents. They deserve consideration for what they were intended to be.
The study of the sources of the Anglo-Saxon medical texts began more than a hundred years ago with T.O. Cockayne's monumental edition of most of the medical, magical and herbal material extant in Old English. Cockayne demonstrated that the most significant text in this corpus, the late ninth-century compilation known as Bald's Leechbook , drew on an impressive range of Latin source materials. Recent work by C.H. Talbot and M.L. Cameron has further extended our knowledge of the classical texts which underlie the Leechbook . Among the significant sources is the text known as the Physica Plinii . Although the Physica survives in several recensions, there has as yet been no systematic study of the relationship between these recensions and the version of the Latin text used by the Old English compiler. The present article investigates Bald's Leechbook as a witness to the history of the Physica Plinii , and demonstrates the complexity of the transmission of the latter work.
Wright and Quirk, Bald's Leechbook; M. Deegan, 'A Critical Edition of MS B. L. Royal 12. D. xvii: Bald's " Leechbook
- G Leonhardi
- Klienere Denkmäler
- I Bibliothek Der Angelsächsischen Prosa
; G. Leonhardi, Klienere angelsächsische Denkmäler I, Bibliothek der angelsächsischen
Prosa 6 (Kassel, 1905); Wright and Quirk, Bald's Leechbook; M. Deegan, 'A Critical Edition of
MS B. L. Royal 12. D. xvii: Bald's " Leechbook " ', (unpubl. PhD dissertation, Univ. of
Manchester, 1991). A new edition is in preparation by Maila D'Aronco.
Leechbook III is thought to preserve the highest proportion of native remedies
- Anglo-Saxon Cameron
- Medicine
Cameron, Anglo-Saxon Medicine, pp. 74-99. Leechbook III is thought to preserve the highest proportion of native remedies;