2015 Nobel Science Prizes: Wisdom, Ancient and Modern
Wisdom, ancient and modern
This year’s Nobels go to the inventors of two anti-parasite drugs, the discoverers of how cells repair their DNA, and the researchers who showed neutrinos have massIT IS easy, in the arrogance of scientific advance, to forget that less than a century and a half ago most medicines were herbal remedies. To this day, some of the best-known, including aspirin, morphine and digitalis, are either made from plants or based on plant molecules. So the fact that artemisinin, the newest treatment for malaria, is derived from a plant used for that purpose in China for well over 2,000 years should be no surprise. The earliest recipe consulted by artemisinin’s discoverer, Tu Youyou, was “The Handbook of Prescriptions for Emergencies”, written in 340BC by Ge Hong (depicted alongside). It gave her helpful hints on how to extract the herb’s active principle.This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline “Wisdom, ancient and modern”From the October 10th 2015 editionDiscover stories from this section and more in the list of contentsExplore the edition