10th Century Eye Infection Treatment Kills MRSA Bacteria Better Than Modern Antibiotics

[VICanucksfan5551]

Modern publishing? Figure it out with Google. With teams working on it all over like the article states, I would say yes. That's why there are others trying to replicate the results. The hands-on part of peer review.

As in, published as an academic paper. I was curious to see what the actual findings were. The article doesn't mention any journal name and I did a quick search for publications of a few of the people mentioned and nothing came up.

[thejazz97]

You'll have a tough time finding it because we have lost sight of what a 'cure' really is in modern medicine.

I'm gonna go with the dark answer here... life itself?

[theminister]

I'm gonna go with the dark answer here... life itself?

It's not a riddle.

It's science.

[thejazz97]

I give up. What is it?

[VICanucksfan5551]

Quick quiz: What was the last disease cured on the planet?

Not inoculated against, not treated. Cured. One that involves a cure being given to a sick person that makes them immediately better.

Off the top of my head, rabies can be cured if treated immediately after exposure. I'm sure there are plenty of other pathogens in the same boat.

[theminister]

Off the top of my head, rabies can be cured if treated immediately after exposure. I'm sure there are plenty of other pathogens in the same boat.

Technically, that's a vaccine not a cure once symptoms are present.

[Dral]

Technically, that's a vaccine not a cure once symptoms are present.

Might be a bit more productive if you give us your definition of 'cure' then

[theminister]

Might be a bit more productive if you give us your definition of 'cure' then

I did. And it's not MY definition.

A substance given to a sick person that eradicates the malady directly.

Helping the autoimmune system to fight a disease is not a cure for the disease itself.

[theminister]

Anyway… the answer is Scurvy.

Natural substance applied into the body. Known since Hippocrates to an extent but not proven until 1932 even though it was well treated back in the 1500's.

Not a single cure since.

[VICanucksfan5551]

Technically, that's a vaccine not a cure once symptoms are present.

Kind of splitting hairs. PEP is still a treatment for somebody who has been exposed to a pathogen and not a preventative inoculation.

Anyway… the answer is Scurvy.

Natural substance applied into the body. Known since Hippocrates to an extent but not proven until 1932 even though it was well treated back in the 1500's.

Not a single cure since.

Scurvy is a vitamin deficiency. If we're going to count that, then there are tons of other examples (eg. vitamin D for rickets, abstaining from gluten for celiac disease)

[theminister]

Kind of splitting hairs. PEP is still a treatment for somebody who has been exposed to a pathogen and not a preventative inoculation.

Scurvy is a vitamin deficiency. If we're going to count that, then there are tons of other examples (eg. vitamin D for rickets, abstaining from gluten for celiac disease)

It's not really. It inhibits the disease until the autoimmune system can eradicate it. Once the person has full-blown rabies it no longer works.

I'll give you the rickets…to a certain extent although symptoms are often not fully eradicated without further measures. Celiac disease is also not cured by the introduction of a substance… it is prevented by withholding a substance.

Regardless, the salient point is that natural remedies are the only cures we have ever found. This discovery should not come as a huge shock but a reminder that historical practices understood that the cause of ailments is the under or over exposure to certain naturally occurring parts of our environment.

My question wasn't as an attack against modern medicine at all but to emphasize that the difficultly arrived at knowledge and practices of our ancestors are not without merit.

[SabreFan1]

Nope.

That's true. Antibiotics are not a cure for disease.

Cure.

What is the treatment for malaria?

Malaria can be cured with prescription drugs. The type of drugs and length of treatment depend on the type of malaria, where the person was infected, their age, whether they are pregnant, and how sick they are at the start of treatment.

http://www.cdc.gov/malaria/about/faqs.html

Malaria is an invasive parasite that can be cured if caught early enough and given the correct meds.

[VICanucksfan5551]

It's not really. It inhibits the disease until the autoimmune system can eradicate it. Once the person has full-blown rabies it no longer works.

I'll give you the rickets…to a certain extent although symptoms are often not fully eradicated without further measures. Celiac disease is also not cured by the introduction of a substance… it is prevented by withholding a substance.

Regardless, the salient point is that natural remedies are the only cures we have ever found. This discovery should not come as a huge shock but a reminder that historical practices understood that the cause of ailments is the under or over exposure to certain naturally occurring parts of our environment.

My question wasn't as an attack against modern medicine at all but to emphasize that the difficultly arrived at knowledge and practices of our ancestors are not without merit.

It's still a cure by any definition of the word except yours which seems to be ludicrously tailored to try to prove a point.

And scurvy can also have permanent symptoms if left untreated for too long, even if vitamin C is administered. Same deal. Seeing as scurvy is something that can reappear whenever vitamin C stops being taken (obviously), tons of other medical treatments can be called "cures" by the same standard (eg. antiretroviral drugs to keep HIV in check, toothpaste and brushing for gum and tooth diseases, organ transplants, cochlear implants, hormone therapy for imbalances, etc. I could go on for days)

If you disqualify antibiotics as "cures", then so do the findings here (assuming they're correct). They're both substances with antimicrobial properties that don't target the pathogen specifically. Can you define what you mean by "natural"?

[Tortorella's Rant]

Voynich Manuscript.

Meaning what exactly?

[theminister]

It's still a cure by any definition of the word except yours which seems to be ludicrously tailored to try to prove a point.

And scurvy can also have permanent symptoms if left untreated for too long, even if vitamin C is administered. Same deal. Seeing as scurvy is something that can reappear whenever vitamin C stops being taken (obviously), tons of other medical treatments can be called "cures" by the same standard (eg. antiretroviral drugs to keep HIV in check, toothpaste and brushing for gum and tooth diseases, organ transplants, cochlear implants, hormone therapy for imbalances, etc. I could go on for days)

If you disqualify antibiotics as "cures", then so do the findings here (assuming they're correct). They're both substances with antimicrobial properties that don't target the pathogen specifically. Can you define what you mean by "natural"?

It's not ludicrously tailored except to historical context and the original meaning of the word.

Until the 1800s there was never another concept for the word 'cure' than the one I proposed. I didn't invent it and I didn't manipulate it. While it's true that once we began to understand and look at disease differently we took different approaches to eradicating them, like vaccines, and treatment, like antibiotics… and that meant going away from cures as a stated goal of researchers.

Up until that point all we had to work with was 'natural' substances, as opposed to those created that do not occur in nature,… and that is what we had to tackle sickness…. remedies and cures like the one described. Even citrus for scurvy worked for reasons we didn't understand for hundreds of years.

My point was only that they often worked, even if we don't know why, and we shouldn't be surprised if modern science learns a thing or two from the medicine of the past, despite how archaic we tend to look toward it.

[theminister]

What is the treatment for malaria?

Malaria can be cured with prescription drugs. The type of drugs and length of treatment depend on the type of malaria, where the person was infected, their age, whether they are pregnant, and how sick they are at the start of treatment.

http://www.cdc.gov/malaria/about/faqs.html

Malaria is an invasive parasite that can be cured if caught early enough and given the correct meds.

Fair enough.

[surtur]

Anyway… the answer is Scurvy.

Natural substance applied into the body. Known since Hippocrates to an extent but not proven until 1932 even though it was well treated back in the 1500's.

Not a single cure since.

you want to be technical and dismiss everything else then Scurvy is not a curable disease. Vitamin C is a treatment not a cure. as like many modern medicines once you take away the treatment the issue can return.

[ice orca]

10th century eh? one of the planets most ancient species has developed one of the most advanced immune systems maybe ever..crocodillians. Almost 200 hundred million years of evolution in this feild.