A Two Thousand Year Old Key To Modern Medicine?

A new study by Professor Alain Touwaide, director of the Institute for the Preservation of Medical Traditions, shows that DNA extracted from 2,000-year-old plants recovered from an Italian shipwreck could offer scientists the key to new medicines.

Such remedies are described in ancient Greek texts, but this is the first time the medicines themselves have been discovered. The Institute has the world’s largest digital database of medical manuscripts.

Professor Touwaide is working with scientists at the Smithsonian’s Natural History Museum, who carried out the DNA analysis. They discovered traces of carrot, parsley, alfalfa, celery, wild onion, radish, yarrow and hibiscus contained in the ancient pills.

The pills, which researchers believe were diluted with vinegar or water to make them easier to ingest, were preserved inside tin boxes and were the size of coins.

I was always wondering if the texts were only theoretical notions without practical application… Now we know they were applied.

Professor Alain Touwaide
Institute for the Preservation of Medical Traditions

What is remarkable is that we have written evidence (from the ancient Greeks) of what plants were used for which disorders… This research is interesting, especially for medical historians, because it confirms that what we eat affects our bodies.

Alisa Machalek
National Institutes of Health

To understand the significance of the plants contained in the 2,000-year-old pills, Professor Touwaide studied a number of medical works, including the Hippocratic Collection.

The collection is one of the earliest sets of Greek writings still in existence and is attributed to Hippocrates, considered to be the founder of Western medicine.

He cross-referenced those findings with other works, such as the Encyclopaedia of Natural Substances, written in the 1st Century AD by Dioscorides.

A significant percentage of commercial medicines are derived from natural sources, but the active compound has been isolated, concentrated, standardised and packaged into measured doses.

The shift toward synthetic chemical medicines occurred in the 20th Century, but according to Mark Blumenthal, the founder and executive director of the American Botanical Council, there is renewed interest in the medicinal benefits of natural foods.

Professor Touwaide says the traditional cures based on plants and minerals are in danger of being forgotten.

He says part of the problem is that too few people now study classical Greek, Latin or Arabic and there are not enough experts to interpret the original texts.

Touwaide is proficient in 12 languages and has spent years collecting his library of 15,000 books on plants and their uses. He believes that such ancient knowledge should be protected as part of the world’s heritage.

In May, Professor Touwaide’s conclusions, based on the DNA findings and his own study of medicinal texts, will be formally presented to an international gathering of archaeologists, historians of medicines and other experts in Rome.