Staph Retreat

108 snips

Mar 20, 2026

A medieval recipe is recreated and tested against modern staph bacteria. Researchers mix onion, garlic, ox gall, wine and brass following a thousand-year ritual. Lab results show the ancient brew can kill stubborn MRSA strains. The story raises questions about antibiotic resistance, pharmaceutical decline, and whether old knowledge can help solve new medical crises.

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ANECDOTE

Antibiotic Breakthroughs Were Met With Fast Resistance

The episode traces the rapid arms race between antibiotics and bacteria: many drugs saw resistance within months to years after introduction.
Hosts list examples like methicillin (1960 → resistance 1961) and linezolid (2000 → resistance 2002) to show the pattern.

ANECDOTE

How Two Friends Recreated A 1,000-Year-Old Remedy

Two Nottingham researchers, Dr. Freya Harrison and Dr. Christina Lee, teamed up after an Old English reading group to test a 1,000-year-old remedy from Bald's Leech Book.
Their hobby-meets-research approach led them to recreate the recipe precisely and pursue lab tests rather than dismissing it as superstition.

ANECDOTE

A Reenactor’s Hobby Sparked Scientific Discovery

Freya Harrison combined her microbiology career with Anglo-Saxon reenactment interests after moving to Nottingham, leading her to study Bald's Leech Book.
Her hobby (dressing as a nun, reenacting) directly motivated the experimental recreation of historical remedies.

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A strange brew that's hard to resist, even for a modern day microbe.

In the war on devilish microbes, our weapons are starting to fail us. The antibiotics we once wielded like miraculous flaming swords seem more like lukewarm butter knives. But in this episode, originally released in 2015, we follow an odd couple, of a sort, to a storied land of elves and dragons. There, they uncover a 1,000-year-old secret that makes us reconsider our most basic assumptions about human progress and wonder: what if the only way forward is backward?

Special thanks to Steve Diggle, Professor Roberta Frank, Alexandra Reider and Justin Park (our Old English readers), Gene Murrow from Gotham Early Music Scene, Marcia Young for her performance on the medieval harp and Collin Monro of Tadcaster and the rest of the Barony of Iron Bog.

Can’t get enough of that sweet, sweet antibiotic resistance content? Then you’ll be over the moon about next week’s release. It’s the podcast cut of our most recent installment of our live show series called Viscera. This one features executive editor Soren Wheeler and Avir Mitra, and it’s all about how our millenia's-long war against bacteria came to a tipping point in this modern age.

Subscribe or follow our show on your favorite streaming platform and you’ll be the first to know when it drops.

EPISODE CREDITS:
Reported by - Latif Nasser
Produced by - Matt Kielty and Soren Wheeler

EPISODE CITATIONS:
Articles -
Uncovering the multifaceted mechanism of action of a historical antimicrobial (https://zpr.io/mucw6Td6LBxT) by Harrison, F et al, 2026 bioRxv (PREPRINT). In this article Freya and her team describe the mechanisms under which Bald’s Remedy actually works.

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