Staph Retreat

Summary

Radiolab: "Staph Retreat" (November 3, 2015)
WNYC Studios
Hosts: Jad Abumrad & Robert Krulwich
Reported by Latif Nasser

---

Episode Overview

"Staph Retreat" explores the history and future of the fight against Staphylococcus aureus (“staph”) bacteria, focusing on the origins of antibiotics and the discovery of an ancient remedy that surprisingly works against MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus). The episode weaves storytelling and scientific inquiry to ask: Can revisiting forgotten past remedies offer hope against modern superbugs?

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

Part 1: The Miracle (and Limits) of Antibiotics

• The Discovery of Penicillin

  • Latif Nasser and science writer Maren McKenna recount Alexander Fleming’s accidental discovery in 1928, when a spot of mold (Penicillium) killed staph bacteria in a neglected petri dish.
    • “He was a slob, basically, and he goes on a vacation…leaves his window open and something blows across his lab plates.” (Latif Nasser, 01:35)
  • Penicillin quickly becomes a "miracle drug," dramatically cutting deaths from infectious diseases.

• The Rise of Resistance

  • Almost simultaneously with penicillin’s glory, resistance is reported: “Virtually at the exact same time…a Stanford researcher publishes that he has found five different strains of staph that do not respond to penicillin.” (Latif Nasser, 04:08)
  • This kickstarts an ongoing “arms race”: drug after drug is introduced, and resistance follows—often within a year.
    • Timeline of drugs and resistance (see 05:16): streptomycin (1943/1948), methicillin (1960/1961), clindamycin (1969/1970), etc.

• Why Superbugs Are Winning

  • Since the early 2000s, new antibiotic approvals have “fallen off a cliff” (Maren McKenna, 06:11), driven by high costs and poor returns as drugs rapidly lose effectiveness.
  • Hospitals now face infections that “resist all of our drugs” (Latif Nasser, 06:43), leading to tragic outcomes for patients and doctors alike.

---

Part 2: Time Travel and "Bald's Leechbook" – Ancient Medicine for Modern Superbugs

• Meet the Unlikely Team

  • Dr. Freya Harrison (microbiologist & Viking reenactor) and Dr. Christina Lee (Viking studies professor & infectious disease enthusiast) form a friendship at the University of Nottingham (09:00–11:48).
    • “I’ve found my kindred spirit here.” (Christina Lee, 11:28)

• The Discovery of Bald's Leechbook

  • Together, they study an Old English medical manuscript, Bald’s Leechbook (~900 AD), a doctor’s compendium of remedies.
    • “It’s not about hair: ‘leech’ comes from the Old English word for healer or doctor.” (Christina Lee, 12:43)
  • The book contains bizarre-sounding treatments (devil possession, warts, marital issues) but also a recipe labeled “the best medicine” for “a lump in the eye”—likely a stye, usually caused by staph bacteria (14:44–15:31).

• Recreating the Ancient Remedy

  • Christina and Freya (and later the Radiolab team at home) recreate the recipe using equal parts garlic, another allium (onion or leek), ox bile, wine, and brass pot shavings (16:06–19:08).
    • They let it stand for nine days, then apply the liquid to fake wounds infected with staph.

• An Astonishing Result

  • They expect a small effect, but are stunned:
    • “It was a staph massacre... killing 99.9999% of these bacterial cells.” (Freya Harrison, 20:54)
  • Rigorous testing confirms the result—including against MRSA, a major “superbug” threat: “It killed 90% of them. This is beyond our wildest dreams.” (Freya Harrison, 22:14)

• Not a Miracle Cure (Yet)

  • Caution: No human trials or guarantees of safety. “Absolutely do not do this at home…It might be that if you don’t do it in exactly the way we did, nasty fungus could grow in it, give you a worse infection.” (Christina Lee & Freya Harrison, 22:30–22:43)

---

Memorable Quotes & Reflections

• On Scientific Discovery as Serendipity:
  • “It just seems like if that happened, let’s just open up a bunch more windows. Something ought to blow in.”
    — Soren Wheeler (06:56)
• On Time and Resistance:
  • “If you had enough different [old remedies]…the whole world of the past then becomes the fruit of your future, sort of.”
    — Robert Krulwich (26:38)
• On Learning From the Past:
  • “We need to learn the language of the doctors of that time...I learned a bit of humility this way.”
    — Christina Lee (25:15)
• Shock and Delight at Unexpected Results:
  • “I think she just simply said: ‘What the fook?’”
    — Freya Harrison relaying collaborator's response (22:06)

---

Notable Segments & Timestamps

• Antibiotics Timeline & Arms Race: 05:10–06:16
• Why Drug Approvals Have Plummeted: 06:09–06:21
• Rise of Superbugs / Doctor's Despair: 06:43–06:56
• Introducing Christina Lee & Freya Harrison: 09:00–11:12
• History and Context of Bald’s Leechbook: 12:26–13:16
• Recreating and Testing the Thousand-Year-Old Recipe: 16:02–21:24
• Results vs. MRSA (“What the fook!”): 22:00–22:14
• Theories on Resistance and Cyclical Use: 25:45–27:18
• The Language of Ancient Medicine: 24:09–25:29

---

Episode’s Takeaway

"Staph Retreat" asks listeners to reconsider the past as a source of solutions for the formidable problem of antibiotic resistance. It proposes that ancient knowledge—when interrogated with modern science—may yield unexpected weapons in our medical arsenal. The surprising effectiveness of Bald’s Leechbook remedy is both a call for humility and a challenge: what else is lurking in overlooked histories, waiting to help heal us again?

---

Summary by an expert podcast summarizer. For clarity, timestamps refer to the original audio in MM:SS format. Non-content and promotional sections have been omitted.

Transcript

[Latif Nasser]

Oh, wait, you're listening.

[Freya Harrison]

Okay. All right.

[Jad Abumrad]

Okay.

[Latif Nasser]

All right.

[Soren Wheeler]

You're listening to Radiolab radio from wny.

[Maren McKenna]

See y.

[Jad Abumrad]

I'm Jad Abumrad.

[Robert Krulwich]

I'm Robert Krulwich.

[Jad Abumrad]

This is Radiolab.

[Robert Krulwich]

And today, well, today, yes, the story of an axe wielding nun coming through a window to smack some staphylococcus and take you back to the future.

[Latif Nasser]

Exactly.

[Jad Abumrad]

The story comes.

[Robert Krulwich]

Does that make any sense? I don't know.

[Jad Abumrad]

Well, it will. Okay, the story comes in two parts, both from our producer Latif Nasser. And here's part one.

[Latif Nasser]

So the way the story goes, it starts in 1928.

[Maren McKenna]

1928. Alexander Fleming, the story goes, who knows if it's apocryphal or not, is growing staph, staphylococcus in his lab.

[Latif Nasser]

That's Maren McKenna, she's a science WR. And Staph is a bacterium.

[Maren McKenna]

It lives on our skin and it especially likes parts of the body that are warm and damp.

[Latif Nasser]

So it likes to be just up our noses or in our genitals or.

[Maren McKenna]

In our armpits, places like that.

[Latif Nasser]

And generally it's no big deal, doesn't really do us any harm. But if it gets into a scratch or a cut and makes its way.

[Maren McKenna]

Inside our bodies, staph goes from being this benign companion to being potentially deadly.

[Latif Nasser]

Anyway, London, 1928.

[Maren McKenna]

Fleming is growing staff in his lab.

[Latif Nasser]

In these little petri dishes. And he was a slob, basically, and he goes on a vacation, leaves his petri dishes covered in bacteria just around, leaves his window open and something blows.

[Maren McKenna]

Across his lab plates.

[Latif Nasser]

Some tiny little speck of a thing just floats in through the window and comes to a rest on one of those petri dishes.

[Maren McKenna]

And so a few weeks later, Fleming.

[Latif Nasser]

Finally back from vacation, he needs to.

[Maren McKenna]

Use those lab plates again. And he and his assistant go to clean them off.

[Latif Nasser]

I mean, you'd imagine that he would seed some real lush, nice furry lawn of staff just overflowing right out of the plate because it's been sitting there for so long, it's been a staff party.

[Maren McKenna]

But on one of the plates that they pick up, they realize that.

[Freya Harrison]

It'S.

[Maren McKenna]

Almost polka dot, it's got little dead.

[Latif Nasser]

Zones all over it, little patches where the staff is dead, dead patches.

[Robert Krulwich]

So something blew through the window, landed in the dish and starts killing the bacteria.

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah. And so when Fleming looks down at his plate, he sees that at the center of these, you know, staff dead zones, there's a tiny speck of natural mold, of mold.

[Maren McKenna]

And they realize that that mold is expressing a compound that is killing the staph around it.

[Latif Nasser]

It's like emanating rays of death.

[Jad Abumrad]

What was the compound?

[Latif Nasser]

That compound was called.

[Maren McKenna]

Penicillin.

[Latif Nasser]

The first true antibiotic.

[Maren McKenna]

Infectious diseases that had been killing people for as long as we had been people suddenly could be stopped and it.

[Jad Abumrad]

Just blew in through the window.

[Maren McKenna]

That is the story that's always been told.

[Latif Nasser]

However it got there, it was amazing. It was a miracle.

[Robert Krulwich]

It was called a miracle drug. Right.

[Maren McKenna]

I mean, it was just. It really was a moment when the world changed. When Fleming was put on the COVID of Time magazine.

[Latif Nasser]

This was 1944, height of World War II.

[Maren McKenna]

It was a picture of his face and the banner on the COVID said, his penicillin will save more lives than war can spend.

[Latif Nasser]

But. And this is. I had no idea about this. Virtually at the exact same time, when Fleming's face is on the COVID of Time magazine, like two months later, this Stanford researcher publishes that he has found five different strains of staph that do not respond to penicillin. Really? Yeah.

[Jad Abumrad]

This is happening while he's on the.

[Latif Nasser]

COVID Virtually the exact same moment.

[Maren McKenna]

And it's the first sign that staff has responded to the penicillin in the world by developing resistance.

[Soren Wheeler]

It's almost like separate.

[Jad Abumrad]

Sir Soren Wheeler.

[Soren Wheeler]

The era of penicillin was over before.

[Maren McKenna]

It began, almost before it began, before.

[Latif Nasser]

It'S even released to the general public.

[Christina Lee]

Wow.

[Maren McKenna]

And that penicillin resistant staph moves across the globe.

[Latif Nasser]

And in 1957, in Cleveland, some scientists gather together and they are in a panic.

[Maren McKenna]

They have no idea why they've lost the antibiotic miracle so quickly.

[Latif Nasser]

So scientists across the globe put their brains together and try to come up with a new drug.

[Maren McKenna]

The next amazing thing.

[Latif Nasser]

And in 1960, they get it.

[Maren McKenna]

Methicillin. And it works for about 11 months.

[Soren Wheeler]

11 months.

[Latif Nasser]

And so we started this arms race.

[Maren McKenna]

There was a bug and then there was a drug that took care of it, and then there was a better bug.

[Soren Wheeler]

Drug, bug, drug, bug.

[Maren McKenna]

Right, exactly.

[Latif Nasser]

I actually found this list. Do you want to hear it? Yeah. Okay, so streptomycin, 1943, resistance, 1948. Methicillin, 1960, resistance, 1961. Clindamycin, 1969, resistance, 1970.

[Soren Wheeler]

Wow.

[Maren McKenna]

You can think of it as leapfrog or you can think of it as a game of whack a mole.

[Latif Nasser]

Ampicillin, 1961, then 1973. So that's a little Carbenicillin released 1964, resistance 1974.

[Jad Abumrad]

They're getting better. They're getting better.

[Maren McKenna]

There were always more drugs. You know, drug development was doing really well for a really long time.

[Latif Nasser]

Hyperacillin introduced 1947, 1980. Resistance 1981.

[Maren McKenna]

But after the year 2000, drug companies begin to realize it's not really in their best interest to make antibiotics anymore.

[Latif Nasser]

And the end I have on this list is Lineizolid, which is introduced 2000. Resistance 2002.

[Old English Reader]

Wow.

[Latif Nasser]

There are a few more, but you get the idea.

[Maren McKenna]

Antibiotic approvals, the entry of new drugs to the market just kind of fell off a cliff.

[Soren Wheeler]

Why?

[Maren McKenna]

Well, it takes 10 years and a billion dollars to get to the point where the drug is marketable.

[Latif Nasser]

But as soon as you get the drug on the market, the res clock is running, so you probably won't make your money back. And as you've probably heard, we now have these situations.

[Maren McKenna]

A frightening new warning from the Centers for Disease Control about the spread of a string of germs where literally nothing works. So called superbugs are now turning up in hospitals in and the patient dies.

[Latif Nasser]

There are now bugs that can resist all of our drugs.

[Maren McKenna]

I have seen physicians break down weeping over this. It's not the way that medicine is supposed to fail anymore, but it does.

[Soren Wheeler]

I mean, I know that possibly the origin story of penicillin is apocryphal, so this is all a little suspect. But you know, just to enjoy imaginings for a moment, like it just seems like if that happened, let's just open up a bunch more windows. Something ought to blow in.

[Maren McKenna]

But we could wait a long time, right? I mean, we had staff had been around for millennia before 1928.

[Latif Nasser]

But you know, the whole reason that I wanted to do this story is because kind of there is a new window. It's a different kind of window, though.

[Jad Abumrad]

Not a window next to some petri dishes.

[Latif Nasser]

Not a window next to some petri dishes. Kind of a window next to some petri dishes, but a totally different kind of window.

[Jad Abumrad]

What kind of window is it?

[Latif Nasser]

Well, I'm about to tell you that.

[Jad Abumrad]

Is something blow into the window?

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah, but it's not mold. It's way more fun than mold. It carries an axe. How about that?

[Jad Abumrad]

So it's a person.

[Latif Nasser]

Maybe. I don't know what. I don't even know what I'm referring to anymore.

[Isabel]

Hello, this is Isabel and the birds calling all the way from Montevideo, Uruguay. Radiolab is supported in part by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about Sloan at www dot.sloan.

[Robert Krulwich]

Dot.

[Isabel]

All right, guys, ciao.

[Jad Abumrad]

Part two.

[Robert Krulwich]

Yep.

[Jad Abumrad]

Okay. Hey, I'm Jad Abumrad.

[Robert Krulwich]

I'm Robert Krulwich.

[Jad Abumrad]

This is Radiolab.

[Robert Krulwich]

We're ready now for part two. Now, remember when part one ended, there was a window open and something was going to come through. We don't know what.

[Jad Abumrad]

We know it's not mold.

[Robert Krulwich]

Yeah, we know it's not mold. So whatever it is, whatever it was, whatever it will be, we will hear about it now from our reporter. Lot of Nasser.

[Latif Nasser]

Well, actually, there is this story about these two women who did open a window to an alien and distant land. And actually, in a way, it's a story about reimagining the past, but to me, it's a story about a friendship. Hey, everybody.

[Freya Harrison]

Hello again. Hello again.

[Latif Nasser]

It's a story about an unlikely friendship.

[Jad Abumrad]

It's a buddy film.

[Latif Nasser]

It's a buddy. Yeah, it's a buddy movie.

[Jad Abumrad]

Okay, so, yeah, maybe just walk us through it.

[Latif Nasser]

Right, so. Okay, so you have.

[Christina Lee]

Hello, I'm Dr. Christina Lee.

[Latif Nasser]

Christina.

[Christina Lee]

And I'm an associate professor in Viking Studies at the School of English at the University of Nottingham.

[Latif Nasser]

She's a historian. And then you also have.

[Freya Harrison]

Hi, I'm Freya Harrison.

[Latif Nasser]

Freya.

[Freya Harrison]

I'm a research fellow in the center for Biomolecular Sciences at the University of Nottingham.

[Latif Nasser]

And Freya, Freya's a microbiologist. She studies bacteria. We'll start with her.

[Freya Harrison]

Okay. So most of my work is about sort of looking at how bacteria evolve during very, very long lived infections. But my big hobby is Anglo Saxon and Viking reenactment. So I had purely sort of amateur interest in the history and mainly in dressing up as a warrior and going to fight club every Wednesday night and learning to use the weapons.

[Latif Nasser]

Really?

[Freya Harrison]

Yeah.

[Latif Nasser]

So this is actually not Freya's group. This is a group in New Jersey. But basically they do the same thing. Hundreds of people go out into, you know, some field with some dulled weapons.

[Freya Harrison]

Everything from swords, spears, axes, and we give each other a jolly good bashing and have a good time.

[Latif Nasser]

I only mention this because it, it actually plays into the story.

[Freya Harrison]

Well, it was a really nice sort of coincidence, really. So I.

[Latif Nasser]

2012, a few years after finishing her doctorate, Freya goes off to work at the University of Nottingham.

[Freya Harrison]

Nottingham's one of the places in the UK not only for microbiology, but for Anglo Saxon and Viking history.

[Latif Nasser]

And she goes there to study microbes, but she figures, hey, why not while I'm here, brush up on my old English.

[Freya Harrison]

I studied some old English to a level where I could sort of read and speak a little bit.

[Latif Nasser]

But she figured, hey, she could be better, and if she did, she would get deeper into the whole reenactment thing.

[Freya Harrison]

So I rather cheekily emailed the School of English's Old English reading group.

[Latif Nasser]

That's where she met Christina the historian. At one point, Christina the historian asks Freya, like, what do you do? And Freya said, you know, my day job is that I'm a microbiologist, but on evenings and weekends, I'm a history nerd. And Christina said the moment she heard.

[Christina Lee]

That, I just kind of thought, I've found my kindred spirit here.

[Latif Nasser]

Because she was like, wow, I'm like your mirror image because I'm a historian by day, but by night, I'm a microbiology nerd.

[Christina Lee]

I've been interested in infectious disease for quite a long time, which I don't find any kind of friends in my department.

[Latif Nasser]

She told me she's the kind of person who would, you know, watch Ebola coverage on the news and not be able to stop watching. So eventually they start talking about historical diseases. So, like, how would people back then have treated something like, you know, Ebola? Freya is especially interested in this because she, for her historical reenactment, is developing this nun character who goes off and heals people. But anyway, so they're talking back and forth, and then to cut a long story short, they find themselves both interested in this one particular book.

[Freya Harrison]

It's known as Bald's Leech Book. So this is about 1100 years old.

[Robert Krulwich]

What's it called? Bald's What?

[Christina Lee]

Bald's Leech Book. It's nothing to do with no hair.

[Robert Krulwich]

Oh.

[Christina Lee]

Even though it is spelled bald.

[Robert Krulwich]

Is it B, A, L, D?

[Christina Lee]

It is indeed.

[Robert Krulwich]

And leech like leech like a leech, like a little worm that grabs onto your and sucks your blood?

[Freya Harrison]

No, no.

[Christina Lee]

It comes from the old English word leche, which is actually a healer or a doctor.

[Freya Harrison]

So the little squiggly animals are called leeches because they're medicinal, not the other way around.

[Latif Nasser]

Oh, so the doctor wasn't named for the leech, the leech was named for the doctor.

[Freya Harrison]

Exactly. Yeah.

[Jad Abumrad]

And bald is the. Is a man. The guy wrote the book.

[Freya Harrison]

We think it's a guy. We think it's a guy's name.

[Jad Abumrad]

And what is this book?

[Latif Nasser]

So it's kind of like this old healer's handbook. It's filled with these potions and cures.

[Christina Lee]

The original manuscript is in the British.

[Freya Harrison]

Library, locked away, but 21st century. Very kind. People have digitized the original Old English text and put it online.

[Latif Nasser]

So Christina and Freya bring it up and they start going through all the.

[Christina Lee]

Remedies and, you know, it describes to you remedies for stuff that is a little bit different.

[Old English Reader]

You know, things like thone devor thone.

[Latif Nasser]

Manon, possession by the devil, which, according to this leech book, the remedy for someone who is possessed by the devil.

[Old English Reader]

Is you spew a drink, ellutre, make.

[Latif Nasser]

This kind of like foul brew. You make them drink it and it'll make them vomit out the devil. And then there's another remedy for warts. And all I'm going to say about that one is that it involves hound's urine and mouse blood and then things.

[Old English Reader]

Like yifmon seah torana, how shall we.

[Freya Harrison]

Say, make your husband more physically attentive or less physically attentive. Whichever you. Whichever direction you need to moderate it.

[Robert Krulwich]

Pig's blood, I hope, or toad blood.

[Old English Reader]

Drink on neoct Nestia.

[Latif Nasser]

Actually, it's just you boil a plant in some water and give it to the guy. Oh, yeah. Anyway, so Frey and Christina are going through this leech book looking for some kind of wound, something that was clearly an infection, some pussy, something we could.

[Freya Harrison]

Clearly say that's bacterial.

[Latif Nasser]

And eventually they find an entry where.

[Freya Harrison]

At the end of the recipe, it.

[Old English Reader]

Says in Old English say, betsta la.

[Freya Harrison]

Sebetz de la schdom. The best medicine.

[Latif Nasser]

The best medicine. Yeah.

[Old English Reader]

Move over.

[Latif Nasser]

LAUGHTER yeah.

[Freya Harrison]

And we thought, how can we not try this one?

[Latif Nasser]

What was the best medicine for?

[Freya Harrison]

So it said it was for a lump in the eye.

[Christina Lee]

It's actually called wen in Old English.

[Freya Harrison]

These days, if you get a course, that could be something like a wart. Right.

[Christina Lee]

But there is a suggestion by archaeologists that eye infection was rife amongst the Anglo Saxons because you lived in buildings where you had smoke going on, you lived cramped together.

[Freya Harrison]

So it could also be a stye.

[Latif Nasser]

What is a stye?

[Freya Harrison]

It's an infection of an eyelash follicle.

[Robert Krulwich]

You rub it and it itches and then it gets swollen.

[Freya Harrison]

It causes quite a nasty red lump.

[Robert Krulwich]

It's a stye in your eye.

[Latif Nasser]

Stye in your eye. Now, it just so happens that the bacteria that causes the stye in your.

[Freya Harrison]

Eye is staphylococcus aureus.

[Latif Nasser]

Staph.

[Jad Abumrad]

Oh, the same stuff as the Mr. Window Man. Penicillin man.

[Latif Nasser]

Exactly.

[Freya Harrison]

And we just thought, wouldn't it be nice to have a bit of spare time and earn a couple of hundred quid to buy the ingredients and Just give this a go.

[Christina Lee]

Yes, let's give it a try.

[Freya Harrison]

You know, why the hell not?

[Latif Nasser]

And matter of fact, look at this place. We thought that too.

[Robert Krulwich]

Studio.

[Latif Nasser]

Not bad at all. Recently, producer Matt Kielty and I went to my tiny apartment in the city and we tried to cook it up, too. Are you ready to cook? Oh, I'm ready to cook.

[Freya Harrison]

I've got this recipe here if you'd like it.

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Please read it. Go for it.

[Freya Harrison]

Okay. It goes like this.

[Latif Nasser]

That's the first line of the recipe. And right off the bat for Christina and Freya, there's a problem. That first ingredient, the word kropliac.

[Freya Harrison]

Kristina said it was quite difficult to translate.

[Christina Lee]

Nobody quite knows, you know, what it.

[Latif Nasser]

Is, but luckily, just a couple words over was a clue.

[Old English Reader]

Then Garliak.

[Latif Nasser]

Second ingredient.

[Christina Lee]

Garlic, which is an allium species and crop. Liach.

[Freya Harrison]

We know this was another allium.

[Christina Lee]

That's what the dictionary of Old English tells us.

[Latif Nasser]

So they figured probably what they were dealing with was an onion or a.

[Freya Harrison]

Leek, but we didn't know which one, so we thought, okay, we'll try one that has onion and one that has leek.

[Latif Nasser]

Now, the recipe doesn't call for this, but we did it anyway. Peel the onion, chop it up the same for the garlic.

[Christina Lee]

And the recipe doesn't tell you how much. It just tells you equal amounts of.

[Latif Nasser]

So you take out the measuring cups. You measure out equal amounts. Yeah, Equal amounts into the pestle. And then after that. Okay, it says tosomne pounded well together.

[Jad Abumrad]

Okay.

[Christina Lee]

To be really pounded and pounded. Freya did.

[Freya Harrison]

Yeah, yeah. So lots of. Lots of time with the mortar and pestle muscles built up from wielding a sword for pounding the ingredients.

[Latif Nasser]

Look, it's starting to be more of a mush. Third ingredient.

[Freya Harrison]

The next one was definitely something you wouldn't have knocking around in your kitchen.

[Old English Reader]

And Fearland. Baya Em fela.

[Freya Harrison]

Ox gall.

[Latif Nasser]

Ox gall.

[Freya Harrison]

Bovine bile from a cow's gallbladder.

[Robert Krulwich]

What do you do? Have to kill the cow and then go reach?

[Freya Harrison]

No, it's actually a very standard ingredient in microbiology labs.

[Soren Wheeler]

Ox bile.

[Latif Nasser]

Today in 2015, you can, but should not just buy it on the Internet. Here we go. Here we go. And so you take the ox bile, add it to the onion and garlic.

[Freya Harrison]

And then the fourth ingredient, Ye neem. Wine.

[Latif Nasser]

Wine time. Red wine, white wine. Like, what kind of wine are we talking about here?

[Freya Harrison]

This is the thing. So we had quite a discussion about what type of wine should we use, and we don't know really did they have red wine? Did they have white wine? What was the alcohol content? But I did a bit of detective.

[Latif Nasser]

Work and she figured out that the monastery where this leech book was written, well, they, she figured out where their vineyard was.

[Freya Harrison]

And just down the road there's this modern organic vineyard.

[Latif Nasser]

So they used that wine. I just want to point out how difficult it is to find English wine. We had to use Italian.

[Old English Reader]

But thou lace do sone on arfat.

[Latif Nasser]

Once you get all that stuff together, you're onto the final ingredient.

[Freya Harrison]

The fifth ingredient was actually that you're specifically told that you have to mix these ingredients together in a brass or a bronze pot. I don't have one. So we had to sort of add pieces of copper that would have been available to people, people at the time.

[Latif Nasser]

So they had to do some research. But they figured out that the copper of today, that is most like the copper of a millennium ago, was actually.

[Freya Harrison]

Cartridge brass, which is what's used as standard in plumbing fittings.

[Latif Nasser]

Dropped a few pennies in there. We actually use pennies. Do I stir it? I think I stir it. It's like a world's worst cooking show.

[Freya Harrison]

It looks and smells like quite a nice, quite a nice summer soup.

[Latif Nasser]

Oh. Oh, it looks awful. Oh, that's so gross. Clearly we botched this whole thing. Let us stand the neonicht on them arfate and finally. So we're gonna cover it. Okay, we're covering it. The directions say we have to let the whole thing sit for a while.

[Freya Harrison]

It has to be stored for nine days and nights.

[Latif Nasser]

Okay, that's it.

[Robert Krulwich]

One day goes by two days.

[Latif Nasser]

3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. Alright, nine days later. All right, here we go. You ready?

[Freya Harrison]

Mm.

[Latif Nasser]

All right, here we go.

[Old English Reader]

And on them, Arafat, a ring through cloth.

[Freya Harrison]

Then you have to strain it through a cloth. The liquid that comes off you apply to the person's eye.

[Christina Lee]

With a feather.

[Latif Nasser]

Now clearly we didn't have any staff to try this out on, but Freya in her lab, she made these mock.

[Freya Harrison]

Wounds with these little plugs of collagen. So it's a bit like jelly basically.

[Latif Nasser]

It's like a goopy substance made to be kind of like a flesh wound.

[Freya Harrison]

And we infect these wounds with bacteria with the staph.

[Latif Nasser]

Then they put this thousand year old recipe that had been standing there for nine days, they put it on the bacteria that was in the fake wound.

[Freya Harrison]

Obviously we didn't think this was going to work. No, we thought, you know, well, given the ingredients, we might see some small killing effect on the bacteria. But it won't be anything to write home about.

[Latif Nasser]

They thought Maybe it'd kill 10%, 20% of the bacteria. But then when they came back the.

[Freya Harrison]

Next day, it was a staph massacre.

[Latif Nasser]

It went on a rampage. It went on a staph rampage.

[Freya Harrison]

It was killing, you know, 99.9999% of these bacterial cells.

[Latif Nasser]

What?

[Freya Harrison]

Yeah. First we thought we'd made some sort of mistake and this was some kind of fluke, you know, we'd accidentally mixed up our plates or mislabeled something.

[Latif Nasser]

So they run the entire experiment again, they grab the ingredients, mash them up, put them on some bacteria and it happens again.

[Freya Harrison]

Just absolutely wiped out the bacteria, killed them dead.

[Latif Nasser]

Then they tried a third time and a fourth and a fifth, and it works every time.

[Freya Harrison]

This is, this, this is just something you, you really don't see in your career as a microbiologist.

[Latif Nasser]

And eventually they escalated from just regular staff to MRSA to the methicillin resistant staff. And this is one of the bad ones, the superbug.

[Maren McKenna]

New government data estimate that about 2,000.

[Christina Lee]

People are dying of community based MRSA every year.

[Latif Nasser]

This one is very dangerous. So Christina and Freya, they sent some of Bald's brew to one of their collaborators in the States, our collaborator, Kendra.

[Freya Harrison]

Rumbaugh in Lubbock in Texas.

[Latif Nasser]

Kendra took the stuff, put it on some MRSA bacteria, and then a week later sent Freya and Christina an email.

[Freya Harrison]

And I think it was actually a three word response. I think she just simply said, what the fook?

[Latif Nasser]

What?

[Freya Harrison]

The.

[Latif Nasser]

Bald's best medicine had just wreaked Havoc on the MRSA. It killed 90% of them.

[Freya Harrison]

This is beyond our wildest dreams.

[Latif Nasser]

Now Frey and Christina made very clear that this is not yet a miracle drug. I mean, it's not, not even being tested in humans.

[Christina Lee]

So absolutely do not do this at home.

[Latif Nasser]

They don't even know if this is safe.

[Freya Harrison]

It might be that if you don't do it in exactly the way we did, nasty fungus could grow in it, give you a worse infection.

[Latif Nasser]

So we should not have done this. Matt and I, we dumped ours down the drain. But the thing about this whole story that is so intriguing and so cool to me is this time travel thing, which is so strange. Like, it's like the idea that something a thousand years ago, like a bullet forged a thousand years ago, we could, we could use it now and then it could work. That, that the time travel dimension of that is so weird to. It kind of makes you think differently about, I don't know, progress.

[Christina Lee]

So without Much further ado, Dr. Christina Lee and Dr. Freya Harrison, and they're going to talk to us about some ancient biotics.

[Latif Nasser]

For example, just a few weeks ago, Freya and Christina got up in front of the Royal Society of Chemists.

[Christina Lee]

Thank you very much. And it is an absolute pleasure to be here.

[Latif Nasser]

Large hotel, conference room, 100 or so people. Frey actually got up on stage dressed as a nun.

[Freya Harrison]

Okay, so this is one interpretation of what an Anglo Saxon scientist may have looked like.

[Latif Nasser]

And they presented the results.

[Freya Harrison]

Next ingredient is particularly the cooking demo.

[Latif Nasser]

And then at some point, Christina said something really interesting. She was like, okay, sure, we want to write this off because it has demons and dragons and elves in it, but are we sure that we know what they meant by those words? Like, for example, there are remedies which.

[Christina Lee]

Ask you sing for Ave Marias.

[Latif Nasser]

And we would say, oh, that's so superstitious. This is all in their heads.

[Christina Lee]

But there again, we should also remember this is a period when people do not have watches. You do not have your nurse, you know, so that's got the watch. Everybody knows the Ave Maria. Everybody knows the length of an Ave Maria.

[Latif Nasser]

So maybe it's. Maybe it's take this medicine and wait 20 minutes. And I know how to standardize 20 minutes, which is 3 Ave Marias. 4 Ave Marias may actually, it may appear one way and it in fact could be a totally different way.

[Jad Abumrad]

It suggests that in order to time travel, you have to somehow. God, it's like we don't even have the language to be able to understand.

[Latif Nasser]

What they were doing, how effective. There's a phrase, the past is a foreign country.

[Christina Lee]

We need to learn the language of the doctors of that time. We need to kind of be a little bit less dismissive and learn a little bit more, you know, stuff from them. I learned a bit of humility this way.

[Latif Nasser]

But here's the reason why this is so confusing to me. So 1100 years is a crazy long time for humans and for bacteria. That's like an exponentially crazy long time.

[Freya Harrison]

Yeah.

[Latif Nasser]

How is it that something that this man bald was doing to these bacteria, then. It's not even the same bacteria. How could that even work?

[Freya Harrison]

That's an awesome question. So one thing we've got to think about is, well, why did these medicines drop out of use? And maybe it's because when they were used, the bacteria evolved resistance. But now, a thousand years later, when these medicines have not been used, you would expect that resistance to be lost.

[Latif Nasser]

This is something that Maren McKenna mentioned to Soren and I, that sometimes when you take a drug out of circulation.

[Maren McKenna]

Sometimes resistance will decline. That doesn't always work, but sometimes resistance does decline. So if we had been using this compound through the ensuing thousand years, then maybe it wouldn't work.

[Robert Krulwich]

So there's an interesting discovery there like that. What worked once and then was resisted. You give it a rest and it can work again. And it will be resisted. And you put it to rest. And if you had enough different. If you could go to different places in the different paths. Did you go to China, where they now got all these people studying Chinese cures and Arab cures? You could come up with a. With a rich curse, historical cocktail of armamentariums that will work. If you bring them in, take them out, bring them in, take them out, and the whole world, the whole world of the past then becomes the fruit of your future, sort of.

[Soren Wheeler]

So it's also possible, like now I have suddenly an image that it's possible.

[Jad Abumrad]

That this is Thorn Wheeler, by the way, in conversation with Marion McKenna Latif.

[Soren Wheeler]

That a thousand years ago, these folks went through what we went through with penicillin in that they. This guy wrote something in the book and it's actually called the Best Medicine. He probably got on the COVID of whatever their version of time was. He got their Nobel Prize and everybody celebrated. And then years later, styes were coming back and the garlic wine didn't work anymore and they stopped using it and it got put away. And then here we are and we discover it and it's been put away long enough that, like, now I'm thinking about future. Some future civilization digs up an old medical textbook that was in some dusty whatever and discovers penicillin. And it works. Did we. Did I lose you on that, Marin?

[Freya Harrison]

No, no, I'm still with you.

[Maren McKenna]

I'm just.

[Freya Harrison]

I don't know how.

[Maren McKenna]

It just seemed like. It seemed like such a great hypothetical construction. I just didn't really know what I.

[Christina Lee]

Could add to it.

[Robert Krulwich]

Sorry.

[Soren Wheeler]

I took.

[Jad Abumrad]

Producer Latif Nasser with help from Soren Wheeler and produced by Matthew Kielty. Special thanks this hour to Steve Diggle.

[Robert Krulwich]

And to Alexandra Ryder and Justin park, who came down from Yale to be our Old English readers.

[Jad Abumrad]

To Gene Murrow from the Gotham early music scene.

[Robert Krulwich]

And to Marcia Young on the medieval.

[Jad Abumrad]

Harp, Colin Monroe of Tadcaster and the.

[Robert Krulwich]

Rest of the Barony of Iron Bog.

[Jad Abumrad]

Not totally sure what that is, but I know they helped us out. And I guess we should help ourselves out.

[Latif Nasser]

Yes.

[Jad Abumrad]

Of the door quickly or through the window. I'm Jedi Murad.

[Robert Krulwich]

I'm Robert Kulwich.

[Jad Abumrad]

Thanks for listening.

[Justin Park]

Message 5 new this is marin mckenna. Hi, this is justin park from the english department at yale. Okay, sunny fox, and I'm reading the appointed message. Radiolab is produced by jad abumrad. Our staff includes brenna farrell, david gable, dylan keith, matt kilty, robert crow, andy mills, latif nasser, kelsey padgett, ariana adrienne, arianne wack, molly webster, soren wheeler, and jamie york. With help from mid u to me, hoff, simon adler, alexander lee young, abigail keel and alexandra brennan. Our fact checkers are ure salt, isa dasher and michelle harris.

[Christina Lee]

End of message.