In 2015, researchers reconstructed a 1,000-year-old eye remedy from Bald’s Leechbook using garlic, onion or leek, wine, cow bile and brass, then left it for the prescribed nine days. It destroyed more than 99.99 percent of S. aureus in laboratory biofilms and reduced MRSA by about 90 percent in infected mouse-wound tissue during a four-hour test—while vancomycin produced no significant reduction under the same conditions.
In 2015, a reconstructed medieval eye remedy cut recoverable Staphylococcus aureus in laboratory biofilms by four to five orders of...