article_snippet: The Leechbook is widely thought of as one of the earliest known medical textbooks and contains Anglo-Saxon medical advice and recipes for medicines, salves and treatments.
article_snippet: Associate Professor Dr Christina Lee, of the University of Nottingham, said: 'Medieval leech books and herbaria contain many remedies designed to treat what are clearly bacterial infections - weeping wounds and sores, eye and throat infections, skin conditions such as the erysipelas rash, leprosy and chest infections.
article_snippet: Given these remedies were developed well before the modern understanding of germ theory, this poses two questions. '
article_snippet: How systematic was the development of these remedies and how effective were these remedies? '
article_snippet: Answering two questions will greatly improve our understanding of medieval scholarship and medical empiricism and may reveal new ways of treating serious bacterial infections that continue to cause illness and death.'
article_snippet: We believe modern research into disease can benefit from past responses and knowledge which is largely contained in non-scientific writings. '