Honey, Mud, Maggots and other medical marvels: the science behind folk remidies and old wives tales

Robert and Michele Root-Bernstein
London: Macmillan, 1999; £12.99
ISBN 0333750381

Medicine has been a crucial part of human society since we first came down from the trees and started to bang the rocks together. As civilisations grew medical knowledge became concentrated among a few specialists. Many lay people, however, practised and continue to practise medical care, often guided by folk tales, tradition, and intuition. In countries such as South Africa traditional or "Shamanic" healing is part of the state healthcare system.

The Root-Bernsteins attempt to explore the scientific basis of many of these folk cures, examine how they were used in times past, and what, if any, relevance they have to modern practice. The result is a vivid and readable account of traditional medicines, which range from the use of honey for infected wounds to urine drinking for fungal infestations.

The book's strongest element is its ability to show how modern medicine can learn from, adapt to, and incorporate much of the "folk" medical knowledge built up over thousands of human generations. The resurgence of leeches as adjuvants to skin graft surgery, using them to ease venous congestion, is a topic that illustrates this strength particularly well.

The book is very much aimed at lay readers, which leads to a number of irritations. The referencing is poor, restricted to a selected reading list at the back of the book. Its style is at times rather too casual. This laxity also seems to have influenced the fact checking, which has been slightly lackadaisical, leading to a range of annoying and easily correctable errors.

The Root-Bernsteins present everything in a simplistic style, often failing to give much credence to any alternative views. The worst offender for this is the chapter on circumcision, which represents what is currently a topic of heated discussion as a fait accompli.

The final chapters provide an interesting attempt to apply Darwinian and Lamarckian theories of evolution to medicine as a cultural phemomenon. Although this form of scientific cross pollination is intriguing I must confess to a certain scepticism about its appropriateness, and it certainly does not warrant the certainty with which the Root-Bernsteins imbue it.

In these days of emerging and resurgent infection, multiple drug resistance, and increasing chronic disease we should not only invest in gleaming new laboratories and brilliant scientists but also have a root around at the back of the library and blow the dust off some ancient reports. We may well be surprised at the wisdom contained within.

Andy Conway Morris, third year medical student, University of Glasgow


studentBMJ 1999;07:394-436 November ISSN 0966-6494