Staph Retreat

Summary

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Radiolab – "Staph Retreat"

Date: March 20, 2026
Host: Lulu Miller, Latif Nasser
Key Contributors: Jad Abumrad, Robert Krulwich, Soren Wheeler, Freya Harrison, Christina Lee

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Episode Overview

Theme:
"Staph Retreat" explores the ancient and modern struggle against bacterial infections, focusing on MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus). The episode recounts the serendipitous discovery of penicillin, the relentless evolution of antibiotic resistance, and the creative search for new solutions in unlikely places—specifically, resurrecting a medieval remedy from "Bald’s Leechbook" that surprisingly demonstrates powerful antibacterial properties. It’s a journey that fuses history, science, and a bit of Viking cosplay, and asks what we can learn from the medical wisdom of the distant past.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Origin and Limits of Antibiotics (00:52–08:27)

• Fleming’s Penicillin:
  1928, London. Alexander Fleming accidentally discovers penicillin when mold drifts in through an open window, killing staph bacteria in a petri dish (02:29–04:00).

  • “It really was a moment when the world changed.” – Jad Abumrad (04:23)

• Antibiotic Resistance Emerges Fast:
  Shortly after penicillin’s success, resistant staph strains emerge—almost simultaneously with its mass adoption during WWII.

  • "Virtually at the exact same time… this Stanford researcher publishes that he has found five different strains of staph that do not respond to penicillin.” – Latif Nasser (04:48)

• Arms Race Continues:
  New drugs are developed (methicillin, clindamycin, etc.), but bacteria continually leapfrog and develop resistance, often within a year.

  • “The era of penicillin was over before it began, almost before it began.” – Soren Wheeler (05:25)
  • “Drug, bug. Drug bug.” – Jad Abumrad & Soren Wheeler (06:11)

• Drug Development Stalls:
  By the 2000s, pharmaceutical companies stopped pursuing new antibiotics due to massive costs and rapid obsolescence.

  • “Drug approvals just kind of fell off a cliff.” – Jad Abumrad (07:07)

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2. The Medieval Window: Bald's Leechbook (08:27–25:55)

The Modern-Day Discovery

• Enter: Dr. Christina Lee & Dr. Freya Harrison (11:20–13:47):

  • Christina Lee (historian of Viking & Anglo-Saxon England)
  • Freya Harrison (microbiologist & historical reenactor)
  • They bond over a shared interest in Old English, infectious diseases, and reenactment; become research collaborators.

• The Old English Remedy (14:30–16:53):

  • "Bald’s Leechbook," an 1100-year-old manuscript—a healer’s handbook filled with remedies.
  • Leech, or "læce," was old English for healer, not just the worm.
  • They seek a remedy explicitly targeting bacterial infections.

• Discovery: The "Best Medicine" for Eye Lumps (16:40–17:54):

  • Remedy for a “lump in the eye” (likely a stye, i.e., a staph infection).
  • Recipe ingredients: Onion/leek, garlic, ox gall, (English) wine, and copper/brass vessel (or pennies as a modern substitute).
  • Preparation involves pounding ingredients, letting them steep for nine days and nights.

Reconstructing the Remedy (18:13–22:20)

• Following the Ancient Recipe (18:13–21:39):

  • Debate over translation of "kropliac" (onion/leek).
  • Research into wine type and source; local-to-the-manuscript vineyard chosen.
  • Substitution of modern plumbing copper to mimic ancient brass.
  • The concoction steeps for nine days, then is strained (“with a feather”).

• Lab Testing (22:14–23:32):

  • Fake wounds made from collagen jelly are infected with staph and MRSA.
  • Application of the remedy wipes out almost 100% of bacteria on first attempt.
  • Replication of experimental success, both in regular staph and MRSA strains.

  “It was a staph massacre. It went on a rampage… 99.99999% of these bacterial cells.”
  — Freya Harrison (23:01)

  “This is just something you really don’t see in your career as a microbiologist.”
  — Freya Harrison (23:32)

• US Collab and Jaw-Dropping Results (24:05–24:28):

  • Sent to US collaborator Kendra Rumbaugh, who sees similar results on MRSA.
  • “I think she just simply said, ‘What the fook?’” – Freya Harrison (24:14)

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3. From Ancient Brew to Future Drug? (25:55–30:34)

Skepticism and Caution

• Not a Miracle—Yet (24:31–24:51):

  • Emphasis on preliminary nature; not tested in humans, safety unknown.
  • “Absolutely do not do this at home.” – Christina Lee (24:38)
  • “We should not have done this. Matt and I, we dumped ours down the drain.” – Latif Nasser (24:51)

• Time Travel and Reimagination of Progress (24:51–27:37):

  • The story raises questions about assumptions of progress and how ancient knowledge might cycle back into relevance.
  • Discussion about interpreting religious or superstitious components (e.g., “Sing 3 Ave Marias” as a timing method).
    • “Maybe it’s take this medicine and wait 20 minutes. And I know how to standardize 20 minutes, which is 3 Ave Marias.” – Latif Nasser (26:52)
    • “We need to be a little less dismissive and learn a little bit more… learned a bit of humility this way.” – Christina Lee (27:22)

• The Antibiotic Arms Race: The Value of Forgotten Remedies

  • Resistance may wane during long disuse, making old remedies potent again.

    • “Sometimes when you take a drug out of circulation... sometimes resistance does decline.” – Maren McKenna (28:32)

  • The cycle of discovery, resistance, and rediscovery is possible—our ancestors likely saw similar patterns with their own remedies.

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4. Where Are We Now? Updates and Reflections (30:34–32:05)

• Recent Developments:

  • By 2022, Bald’s eye salve enters Phase I human safety trials—no harmful effects detected in healthy volunteers, and main active compounds are being identified.
  • “Potentially great news for all of us, staying a little healthier, using very old things.” – Lulu Miller (31:21)

• Patenting and Historical Equity:

  • If the remedy becomes a drug, who owns the rights? Mr. Bald? The manuscript's author? The university?
    • “It becomes a really interesting question, you know, of who owns the IP on this?” – Christina Lee (32:05)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Something ought to blow in. But we could wait a long time... Staff had been around for millennia before 1928.”
  – Soren Wheeler & Jad Abumrad (08:09)

• “We have a new window... and it carries an axe.”
  – Latif Nasser (08:39)

• “I've been interested in infectious disease for quite a long time, which... I don’t find any kind of friends in my department.”
  – Christina Lee (13:47)

• “Sebesta lachdom. The best medicine.”
  – Freya Harrison (16:45)

• “Maybe it’s take this medicine and wait 20 minutes... and 3 Ave Marias is 20 minutes.”
  – Latif Nasser (26:52)

• “The whole world of the past then becomes the fruit of your future, sort of.”
  – Robert Krulwich (29:20)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Penicillin’s Discovery & Antibiotic Arms Race: 00:51–08:27
• Meet Christina & Freya, and Bald’s Leechbook: 11:20–16:53
• Reconstructing and Testing “The Best Medicine": 18:13–23:32
• USA MRSA Results (“What the fook?”): 24:05–24:28
• Progress, Interpretation, and Time Travel: 24:51–27:37
• Antibiotic Cycling Concept: 28:25–29:26
• Recent Clinical Developments and Patent Questions: 30:34–32:05

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Conclusion

"Staph Retreat" unites historical curiosity, scientific rigor, and storytelling flair to probe whether the solutions to superbugs might be found in our past. The episode’s blend of skepticism and wonder invites us to reconsider old knowledge—and to keep opening new windows (with or without axes).

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For more:

• Learn about Radiolab: radiolab.org
• Find out more about Bald’s Eye Salve research: University of Nottingham’s AncientBiotics project

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Transcript

[Molly Webster]

Hey, it's Molly Webster. I have a surprise for you. Next month, myself and producer Mona Medgauker are going to do an AMA about our snail sex tape episode. You can ask us anything about snails and the behind the scenes of making an episode work. How long did it take us to make? How did we come up with the sound effects? Why are snails and slugs related? The AMA will be on April 16, and in order to come, you have to be a member of the lab. So go to Radiolab.org/join right now, sign up. Use the code word snail to get a discount on your membership. And also, if you sign up now, you get a snail enamel pin. If you're already a member of the lab, come to the ama. Thank you for listening. Can't wait to see you there. April 16th.

[Lulu Miller]

Hey, it's Lulu. This week I want to bring back an episode about scientists who look in the most unexpected place to find a brand new drug to treat a very tricky bug. The bug is mrsa, that really nasty infection people sometimes get in hospitals. And I don't want to give away the drug cause that's sort of all the fun. So I'm going to just pass you off to Jad, Robert and little baby Latif from about a decade ago. Here we go.

[Latif Nasser]

Wait, you're listening.

[Freya Harrison]

All right. Okay.

[Robert Krulwich]

All right.

[Soren Wheeler]

You're listening to Radiolab.

[Latif Nasser]

Radiolab from wnyc. Rewind. So the way the story goes, it starts in 1928.

[Jad Abumrad]

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 writer. And staph is a bacterium.

[Jad Abumrad]

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, in

[Jad Abumrad]

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

[Jad Abumrad]

inside our bodies, staff goes from being this benign companion to being potentially deadly.

[Latif Nasser]

Anyway, London, 1928.

[Jad Abumrad]

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

[Jad Abumrad]

blows 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. And so a few weeks later, Fleming finally back from vacation.

[Jad Abumrad]

He needs to 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.

[Jad Abumrad]

But on one of the plates that they pick up, they realize that it's almost polka dot. It's got little dead zones all over

[Latif Nasser]

it, little patches where the staff is dead.

[Robert Krulwich]

Dead patches. 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

[Jad Abumrad]

zones, there's a tiny speck of natural mold.

[Robert Krulwich]

Of mold.

[Jad Abumrad]

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.

[Jed Abumrad]

What was the compound?

[Latif Nasser]

That compound was called penicillin, the first true antibiotic.

[Jad Abumrad]

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

[Jed Abumrad]

And it just blew in through the window.

[Jad Abumrad]

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.

[Jad Abumrad]

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.

[Jad Abumrad]

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 stage staff that do not respond to penicillin. Really? Yeah.

[Jed Abumrad]

This is happening while he's on the

[Latif Nasser]

COVID Virtually the exact same moment.

[Jad Abumrad]

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.

[Jed Abumrad]

Sir Soren Wheeler.

[Soren Wheeler]

The era of penicillin was over before

[Jad Abumrad]

it began, almost before it began, before

[Latif Nasser]

it's even released to the general public.

[Jed Abumrad]

Wow.

[Jad Abumrad]

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.

[Jad Abumrad]

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

[Jad Abumrad]

With a new drug, the next amazing thing.

[Latif Nasser]

And in 1960, they get it.

[Jad Abumrad]

Methicillin. And it works for about 11 months.

[Soren Wheeler]

11 months.

[Latif Nasser]

And so we started this arms race.

[Jad Abumrad]

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.

[Jad Abumrad]

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.

[Jad Abumrad]

You can think of it as leapfrog, or you can think of it as

[Latif Nasser]

a game of Whack a Mole, 1961, then 1973. So that's a little Carbenicillin, released 1964. Resistance 1974.

[Jed Abumrad]

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

[Jad Abumrad]

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

[Latif Nasser]

Hyperacillin, introduced 1980, resistance 1981.

[Jad Abumrad]

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. Wow. And there are a few more, but you get the idea.

[Jad Abumrad]

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

[Soren Wheeler]

Why?

[Jad Abumrad]

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 resistance clock is running, so you probably won't make your money back. And as you've probably heard, we now have these situations.

[Jad Abumrad]

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.

[Jad Abumrad]

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.

[Jad Abumrad]

But we could wait a long time, right? I mean, 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.

[Jed 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.

[Jed Abumrad]

What kind of window is it?

[Latif Nasser]

Well, I'm about to tell you that.

[Jed Abumrad]

Is something blowing to the window?

[Latif Nasser]

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

[Jed 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. Radiolab is supported by the Stupsky foundation presenting why Big Giving Falls Short. This is a new book that is particularly timely, touching on the intersection of power, wealth, and how we actually solve the problems of the 21st century. It is again called why Big Giving Falls Short. Author Glenn Galitch, CEO of the Stupsky foundation, offers a rare insider view exposing why billionaire and millionaire donors move so slowly while communities battle urgent crises in control. While big giving falls Short, Galitsch reveals how our philanthropic system and culture encourage excessive donor control and keep over $2 trillion from reaching communities by prioritizing wealthy donor interests, power and control. This system doesn't simply slow social progress, but it structurally prevents it. If you care about how extreme wealth shapes our society and how to fix it, this is the book. To read, order your copy of why Big Giving Falls Short by Glenn Galich. That's why Big Giving Falls Short. Out now.

[Jad Abumrad]

The Internet is a dumpster fire and

[Latif Nasser]

we are dumpster diving.

[Freya Harrison]

Mmm, ice feels so good.

[Latif Nasser]

It's almost like watching a slap fight between a bunch of nerds. I have to give you credit for being dogged with this boy. How often do you think about the Roman Empire? Sorry, what? I was just thinking about something.

[Jad Abumrad]

Unsolved Mysteries, Untold Histories, every Friday on

[Latif Nasser]

our podcast, Endless Thread.

[Jad Abumrad]

So go wherever you get your podcasts

[Latif Nasser]

and follow Endless Thread.

[Jed Abumrad]

Uh, part two.

[Latif Nasser]

Yep. Okay.

[Jed Abumrad]

Hey, I'm Jed Abumrad.

[Robert Krulwich]

I'm Robert Krulwich.

[Jed 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.

[Jed 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, Latif 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, it's a, it's a, it's a story about a friendship. Hey, everybody.

[Freya Harrison]

Hello again. Hello again.

[Jed Abumrad]

It's a buddy film.

[Latif Nasser]

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

[Jed Abumrad]

Okay, so yeah, tell. Maybe just walk us through it.

[Latif Nasser]

So, 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 have purely sort of amateur 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.

[Jed Abumrad]

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, it was a really nice sort of coincidence, really.

[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'd studied some Old English to a level where I could sort of read and speak a little bit, but she

[Latif Nasser]

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. Yes, the historian. And I thought 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 found my kindred spirit here because she

[Latif Nasser]

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. 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. 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, Is

[Latif Nasser]

it B, A, L, D, A?

[Christina Lee]

It is indeed.

[Robert Krulwich]

And leech, like leech, like a. Like a leech, like a little worm that grabs onto your.

[Latif Nasser]

And sucks your blood?

[Freya Harrison]

No, no.

[Christina Lee]

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

[Freya Harrison]

a doctor, so that 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.

[Jed Abumrad]

And bald is a man, the guy

[Freya Harrison]

who wrote the book. We think it's a guy. We think it's a guy's name.

[Jed 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 script is in the

[Freya Harrison]

British 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 remedies.

[Christina Lee]

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

[Old English Reader (Alexandra Ryder or Justin Park)]

You know, things like thone deovor, possession

[Latif Nasser]

by the devil, which, according to Leechbook, the remedy for someone who is possessed by the devil is you make 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.

[Old English Reader (Alexandra Ryder or Justin Park)]

Bishop Wirt yknuat osomne.

[Latif Nasser]

And all I'm gonna say about that one is that it involves hound's urine

[Freya Harrison]

and mouse blood and then things like

[Old English Reader (Alexandra Ryder or Justin Park)]

Yif Monser Torana, how shall we say,

[Freya Harrison]

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 (Alexandra Ryder or Justin Park)]

Drink on neacht 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 posse, something we could clearly say that's.

[Freya Harrison]

That's bacterial.

[Latif Nasser]

And eventually they find an entry where

[Freya Harrison]

at the end of the recipe, it

[Old English Reader (Alexandra Ryder or Justin Park)]

says in Old English, say, betzta lachadom.

[Freya Harrison]

Sebesta lachdom. The best medicine.

[Latif Nasser]

The best medicine, yeah. Move over. 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 when 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 and is staphylococcus aureus.

[Latif Nasser]

Staph.

[Jed 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. Studio. Not bad. 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 Kristina 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 is.

[Latif Nasser]

But luckily, just a couple words over was a clue.

[Old English Reader (Alexandra Ryder or Justin Park)]

Then Garliar gave me a second ingredient.

[Christina Lee]

Garlic, which is an allium species. And kropliac.

[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

[Old English Reader (Alexandra Ryder or Justin Park)]

that has onion and one that has leeknua.

[Latif Nasser]

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 off.

[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, E Canuwa.

[Old English Reader (Alexandra Ryder or Justin Park)]

Well, tosomne.

[Latif Nasser]

Pounded well together.

[Soren Wheeler]

Okay.

[Christina Lee]

Have 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. 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 go reach him?

[Freya Harrison]

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

[Latif Nasser]

Ox BILE 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.

[Old English Reader (Alexandra Ryder or Justin Park)]

Ye neem Wine and wine time.

[Latif Nasser]

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.

[Freya Harrison]

Caccioli and figli.

[Latif Nasser]

I just want to point out how difficult it is to find English wine. We had to use Italian. But 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. 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 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. Feels like the world's worst cooking show.

[Freya Harrison]

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

[Latif Nasser]

Oh. Oh, that 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. Okay, that's it.

[Robert Krulwich]

One day goes by two days.

[Latif Nasser]

Three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. All right. Nine days later. All right, here we go. You ready?

[Jed Abumrad]

Mm.

[Latif Nasser]

All right, here we go.

[Freya Harrison]

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

[Old English Reader (Alexandra Ryder or Justin Park)]

With a feather, say Bets da Lactadon.

[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're. We didn't think this was going to work.

[Christina Lee]

No.

[Freya Harrison]

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 staff massacre.

[Latif Nasser]

It went on a rampage. It went on a staff rampage.

[Freya Harrison]

It was killing, you know, 99.99999 of these bacterial cells. 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 in the great wounds, 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 just something 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.

[Jad Abumrad]

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. 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 Kristina made very clear that this is not yet a miracle drug. I mean, it's not even been 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 use it now and then it could work. The time travel dimension of that is so weird to me. It kind of makes you think differently about, I don't know, progress. So without Much further ado, Dr. Christina Lee and Dr. Phil Freya Harrison and they're going to talk to us about some ancient biotics. 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, hundred or so people. Freya actually got up on stage dressed as a nun.

[Freya Harrison]

Okay, so this is one interpretation of what an Anglo Saxon scientists 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.

[Christina Lee]

4 Ave Marias may actually.

[Latif Nasser]

It may appear one way, and it, in fact, could be a totally different way.

[Jed 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]

So how is it that something that this man bald was doing to these bacteria then, like, it's not even the same bacteria?

[Freya Harrison]

Yeah.

[Latif Nasser]

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,

[Jad Abumrad]

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 to go to China, where they now got all these people studying Chinese cures and Arab cures. You could come up with a rich historical cocktail of armamentariums that will work if you bring them in, take them out, bring them in, take them out,

[Latif Nasser]

and the whole world, the whole world

[Robert Krulwich]

of the past then becomes the fruit of your future, sort of.

[Soren Wheeler]

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

[Jed Abumrad]

this is Thorn Wheeler, by the way, in conversation with Marin McKenna Latif, that

[Soren Wheeler]

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 mare?

[Jad Abumrad]

No, no, I'm still with you. I'm just.

[Freya Harrison]

I don't know how.

[Jad Abumrad]

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

[Soren Wheeler]

Sorry I took over.

[Lulu Miller]

Hey, Lulu. Again with a quick. It has been almost a decade since we first aired this episode, and since then, Christina and Freya have published several papers to show how this concoction works and why. Now, Bald's Eye Salve is not quite ready to hit the drugstore shelves yet, but in 2022, it made it over a big hurdle for new phase one safety trials. It was tested on healthy humans, so not already sick folks and not in open wounds. And the results were overall successful. And Freya and her colleagues have a pretty good idea now of which chemicals in the medicine are the important ones so they can distill it down to its bacteria fighting essence. Potentially great news for all of us, staying a little healthier, using very old things. But all this, you know, did leave me with one very important question for Christina the Viking expert. If we get further in clinical trials and this actually becomes, you know, a drug, who owns the patent? Is it Mr. Bald or whoever from, like a thousand years ago? So we asked Christina the Viking expert.

[Jad Abumrad]

I don't know.

[Christina Lee]

I've not, you know, I really don't know, but you know, technically Mr. Bald is having this manuscript written for him. It's in his possession, but that doesn't mean it's his work. So it becomes a really interesting question, you know, of who owns the IP on this

[Lulu Miller]

anyway? Radiolab. Here for you. The hard hitting medical questions, the hard hitting patent questions. Thanks so much for listening. We'll be back next week.

[Jed Abumrad]

Special thanks to Steve Diggle and to

[Robert Krulwich]

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

[Jed Abumrad]

To Gene Murrow from the Got Gotham early music scene and to Marsha Young on the medieval harp, Colin Monroe of

[Robert Krulwich]

Tadcaster and the rest of the Barony of Iron Bog.

[Jed Abumrad]

Not totally sure what that is, but I know they helped us out and I guess we should help ourselves out. Yes, very quickly or through the window. I'm Jedi.

[Robert Krulwich]

I'm Robert Krulwich.

[Jed Abumrad]

Thanks for listening.

[Gabby Santis]

Hi, I'm gabby. I'm from the bay area, california and here are the staff credits. Radiolab is hosted by lulu miller and latif nasser. Soron wheeler is our executive editor. Sarah sandbach is our executive director. Our managing editor is pat walters. Dylan keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes jeremy bloom, w. Harry fortuna, david gable, maria paz, gutierrez sindhu, naina sambandhan, matt kielty, mona margauker, annie mcewan, alex neeson, sara khari, natalia ramirez, rebecca rand, anissa vitce, arian wack, molly webster, and jessica young, with help from gabby santis. Our fact checkers are diane kelly, emily krieger, natalie middleton, angeli, mercy kato, and sophie semey. Leadership support for Radiolab's science programming is provided by the Simons foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

[WNYC Announcer]

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