Will garlic eradicate MRSA?

Every once in a while nature reminds us that we're not as smart as we think we are, that great wisdom remains in its simple offerings. The latest hope in a deadly disease which has baffled doctors and research scientists? Garlic and onion.

Not long ago someone close to us suddenly became gravely ill. Within days she was in intensive care. The diagnosis: MRSA - Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, an antibiotic-resistant bacterial infection which had taken hold in her spine and spread to vital organs.

Doctors tried one medicine after another to kill this "superbug." We almost lost her. She was hospitalized for months, had difficulty eating and speaking, and it took the better part of a year with long stays in rehab facilities before she could walk again. She is much better, but complications remain and while tests showed good results, they can't be sure all the MRSA is permanently gone. Doctors suspected the bacteria had been present in her system for years (how she contracted it remains a mystery), and weren't sure why it suddenly reared its ugly head.

Neither garlic nor onion was on the treatment regimen for the 90,000 Americans annually who are diagnosed with MRSA (with 20,000 fatalities) according to the Centers for Disease Control, but that may change.

A 1,000-year-old concoction of garlic, onion, and cow's bile, with a splash of wine, kills MRSA, at least in mice. Rediscovered in a London library in Bald's Leechbook - an old leather-bound tome of health remedies - this 10th Century Anglo-Saxon recipe for "eye salve" was recreated by university microbiologists at University of Nottingham. They tested Bald's eye salve on large samples of the MRSA bacteria; it wiped out 90 percent of them in short order. The results were presented this week at an annual microbiology conference in Birmingham, U.K.

Researchers tested each ingredient separately without positive results; they were only effective in combination.

The recipe is simple:

Equal amounts of garlic and another allium (onion or leek), finely chopped and crushed in a mortar for two minutes. Add 25 ml (0.87 fl oz) of English wine - taken from a historic vineyard near Glastonbury. Dissolve bovine salts in distilled water, add and then keep chilled for nine days at 4 degrees Celsius.

Now there's an affordable drug. Wonder what other medical wisdom we might glean from days of old...

Sholeh Patrick is a columnist for the Hagadone News Network. Contact her at [email protected]