London ( CNN ) It might sound like a really old wives ' tale , but a thousand-year-old Anglo-Saxon potion for eye infections may hold the key to wiping out the modern-day superbug MRSA , according to new research . The 10th-century `` eyesalve '' remedy was discovered at the British Library in a leather-bound volume of Bald 's Leechbook , widely considered to be one of the earliest known medical textbooks . Christina Lee , an expert on Anglo-Saxon society from the School of English at the University of Nottingham , translated the ancient manuscript despite some ambiguities in the text . `` We chose this recipe in Bald 's Leechbook because it contains ingredients such as garlic that are currently investigated by other researchers on their potential antibiotic effectiveness , '' Lee said in a video posted on the university 's website . `` And so we looked at a recipe that is fairly straightforward . It 's also a recipe where we are told it 's the 'best of leechdoms ' -- how could you not test that ? So we were curious . '' Lee enlisted the help of the university 's microbiologists to see if the remedy actually worked . The recipe calls for two species of Allium ( garlic and onion or leek ) , wine and oxgall ( bile from a cow 's stomach ) to be brewed in a brass vessel . `` We recreated the recipe as faithfully as we could . The Bald gives very precise instructions for the ratio of different ingredients and for the way they should be combined before use , so we tried to follow that as closely as possible , '' said microbiologist Freya Harrison , who led the work in the lab at the School of Life Sciences . The book included an instruction for the recipe to be left to stand for nine days before being strained through a cloth . Efforts to replicate the recipe exactly included finding wine from a vineyard known to have existed in the ninth century , according to Steve Diggle , an associate professor of sociomicrobiology , who also worked on the project . The researchers then tested their recipe on cultures of MRSA , methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus , a type of staph bacterium that does not respond to commonly used antibiotic treatments . The scientists were n't holding out much hope that it would work -- but they were astonished by the lab results . `` What we found was very interesting -- we found that Bald 's eyesalve is incredibly potent as an anti-Staphylococcal antibiotic in this context , '' Harrison said . `` We were going from a mature , established population of a few billion cells , all stuck together in this highly protected biofilm coat , to really just a few thousand cells left alive . This is a massive , massive killing ability . '' Diggle said the team also asked collaborators in the U.S. to test the recipe using an `` in vivo '' wound model -- meaning it 's in a live organism -- `` and basically the big surprise was that it seems to be more effective than conventional antibiotic treatment . '' The scientists were worried they would n't be able to repeat the feat . But three more batches , made from scratch each time , have yielded the same results , Harrison said , and the salve appears to retain its potency for a long time after being stored in bottles in the refrigerator . The team says it now has good , replicated data showing that the medicine kills up to 90 % of MRSA bacteria in `` in vivo '' wound biopsies from mice . Harrison says the researchers are still not completely sure how it works , but they have a few ideas -- namely , that there might be several active components in the mixture that work to attack the bacterial cells on different fronts , making it very hard for them to resist ; or that by combining the ingredients and leaving them to steep in alcohol , a new , more potent bacteria-fighting molecule is created in the process . `` I still ca n't quite believe how well this 1,000-year-old antibiotic actually seems to be working , '' Harrison said . `` When we got the first results we were just utterly dumbfounded . We did not see this coming at all . '' She added : `` Obviously you can never say with utter certainty that because it works in the lab it 's going to work as an antibiotic , but the potential of this to take on to the next stage and say , 'yeah , really does it work as an antibiotic ' is just beyond my wildest dreams , to be honest . '' Lee , who translated the text from Old English , believes the discovery could change people 's views of the medieval period as the `` Dark Ages . '' `` The Middle Ages are often seen as the 'Dark Ages ' -- we use the term 'medieval ' these days ... as pejorative -- and I just wanted to do something that explains to me how people in the Middle Ages looked at science , '' she said .
Researchers say a medieval remedy made of garlic , onion , wine , bile may be able to defeat MRSA superbug . Score: 6