Talk:Bald's eyesalve

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Theleekycauldron (talk) 07:42, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

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Recipe from Bald's Leechbook

• ... that an Anglo-Saxon eye medicine (recipe pictured) has proven effective against MRSA? Source: "Our interdisciplinary team, comprising researchers from both sciences and humanities, identified and reconstructed a potential remedy for Staphylococcus aureus infection from a 10th century Anglo-Saxon leechbook. The remedy repeatedly killed established S. aureus biofilms in an in vitro model of soft tissue infection and killed methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) in a mouse chronic wound model ... One of Bald's remedies, a salve for a “wen” or lump in the eye (Fig. 1), is particularly interesting to the modern microbiologist." from: Harrison, Freya; Roberts, Aled E. L.; Gabrilska, Rebecca; Rumbaugh, Kendra P.; Lee, Christina; Diggle, Stephen P. (September 2015). "A 1,000-Year-Old Antimicrobial Remedy with Antistaphylococcal Activity". mBio. 6 (4). doi:10.1128/mbio.01129-15. ISSN 2161-2129.
  • Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Li Qun (artist)

Moved to mainspace by Dumelow (talk). Self-nominated at 16:35, 16 March 2022 (UTC).

• REJECT!!! Any claim for a medical treatment, in this case antibiotic-resistant staph infection of the eye ("has proven effective"), requires that evidence meet the standards of WP:MEDRS, meaning, briefly, a review of more than one human trial. In Bald's eyesalve, all of the evidence is in vitro. In the cited reference, bacteria-infected mouse wounds were removed from the mouse and treated with the test product for four hours. This reduced the number of bacteria, i.e., killed bacteria, but there was no testing of actual wound healing. There is no live animal evidence, no infected eye evidence in an animal model, and a complete lack of human testing. The DYK should be rejected and the article radically revised to remove any implication that it is a potentially functional treatment rather than a historical curiousity. David notMD (talk) 23:05, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

Hi David notMD, thanks for your message here and at my talk page. As you surmise I write mainly on history and came at this from that angle. I have no medical knowledge and have never written in that field (nor intend to in the future). I must confess to not being familiar with the part of WP:MEDRS that generally prohibits the use of research such as this, many thanks for bringing this up. I think I will go through the article and remove the majority of the "Studies on efficacy" section because of this. Placing on hold for now, if you could bear with me, I would appreciate your input once I have made changes. All the best - Dumelow (talk) 07:48, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

I've made the first trim. How does it look now? Striking the original and suggesting an ALT hook below - Dumelow (talk) 08:13, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

ALT1: ... the Anglo-Saxons may have used a mixture of garlic, another Allium, wine and bovine bile to treat styes?

• IMPROVED ALT1 is properly historical. Consider inserting "may have" before "used", as not known how widespread the use of the salve was. I recommend removing the sentence "Most modern styes are caused by Staphylococcus aureus and several studies have investigated the performance of Bald's eyesalve against this and other bacteria in laboratory conditions. No live animal or human tests have been carried out.[1][3][4][5]" from the article, as it still implies possible efficacy. You don't want home remedy people asking at slaughterhouses for bovine gallbladders! I also recommend not using references 4 (Furner-Purdoe) or 5 (Anonye). Also, remove the bacteria image. David notMD (talk) 08:46, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

Thanks David notMD, I've amended the hook to "may have", deleted the passage you suggested and added in the source on corneal blindness. I've shifted Furner and Anonye to further reading - Dumelow (talk) 09:19, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

I removed Furner and Anonye from Further reading. I recommend more effort to remove specifics about this having potential modern-day medicinal value. The Brennesssel ref should be upgraded to a reference. David notMD (talk) 11:46, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

What is the rationale for removing the "further reading"? I have trimmed the description of some of the specifics. I don't have access to Brennessel but would welcome you adding content if you do? - Dumelow (talk) 07:03, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

I am back to Reject. As it exists on 24 March, the article still has too much medical/health content not supported by WP:MEDRS.

• "The eyesalve us described as a treatment for a "wen" (lump) in the eye, likely a stye, a bacterial infection of an eyelash follicle."[1] The authors of a 2015 science journal article are making an assumption of what was meant by a thousand-year old description of an ailment.
• "Anglo-Saxon physicians may have used observation and experience to design anti-microbial treatments such as the eyesalve.[1]" A scientific concept of microbes and anti-microbial treatment did not exist until centuries later. See Microorganism.
• Naming ingredients as containing anti-microbial compounds presumes the illness being treated was microbial.
• "Bile is a surfactant and may also hold anti-bacterial properties; it is generally thought to prevent bacterial growth in the small intestine." This (unreferenced) statement has no connection to the types of bacteria that might be present in the eye, if in fact what the medievalists were treating was a bacterial infection.
• "Wine may also contain small quantities of plant-based anti-microbial compounds" This is (weakly) based on our knowledge of present day wine. There is no information on the composition of 10th centufy wine.
• "The copper-based vessels in which the salve was prepared may allow the leaching of copper salts into the mixture, which are known to limit bacterial growth. There is some evidence that Allium-derived anti-bacterials may work synergistically with copper." The metallic composition of the period-piece containers is not known. The "some evidence" is from present day in vitro research, clearly not WP:MEDRS. Same for speculation of purpose of a nine day storage.

All in all, I see no redemption for this proposed DYK. David notMD (talk) 00:13, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

Right, I've cut out all mention of styes and any mention of the ingredients performance against microbes. What remains is basically a description of the remedy and its preparation. Much reduced but still just above the minimum DYK length. Proposing another hook - Dumelow (talk) 09:47, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

ALT2: ... the Anglo-Saxons may have used a mixture of garlic, another Allium, wine and bovine bile as an eye medicine?

I will look at again, with a fresh eye. Would anything be gained by having a translation of the text? David notMD (talk) 14:03, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

Sure thing, I've added a transcription of the original text and the British Library's translation - Dumelow (talk) 14:44, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

I apologize for the delay. With the transcription and translation this has become a historical article versus a medicinal one. I will mark this as possibly aceptable pending an evaluation of the copyright situation. David notMD (talk) 20:22, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

Article is new, long enough, Alt2 hook is interesting and citation supported by ref #1, QPQ met. Outstanding issue: the facsimile, reproduction of the text and translation are from ref #1. That science journal article describes this content as copyright by British Library Board, Reproduced with permission. David notMD (talk) 20:24, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

• @David notMD and Dumelow: Is this ready to go? --evrik ^(talk) 15:03, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

I consider the copyright issue unresolved and above my pay grade. Reference #1 has an image of the text, the same script copied, and the translation. All three are used in the Wikipedia article. That journal describes this content as copyright to the British Library Board, Reproduced with permission [in the journal article]. I question the use of same at Wikipedia. David notMD (talk) 15:10, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

I'll weigh in here since copyright is what I focus on. File:Balds-eyesalve-recipe.png is allegedly not in the public domain in the UK, but is in the United States because of different copyright standards. WMF legal counsel has previously weighed in and we take the side of the US regarding old public domain stuff - see commons:Commons:When to use the PD-Art tag if you want the gory details. So the license tag isn't quite right (and I'll work on that in a bit), but it is PD and certainly usable here. VernoWhitney (talk) 21:01, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

The script copied is also fine, for the same reasons as above. The translation, however, is not completely free. Translations are derivative works, which means they're subject to the copyright claim of both the original text (PD, so not a problem) and the translator (appears to be the British Library). Now it looks like the British Library puts everything out under CC-BY-4.0, which isn't quite compatible with us, but there's certainly a strong argument to be made that the translation satisfies our non-free content requirements. I'll do some more research into the British Library angle for my own edification, but I'm not inclined to call the use in the article a copyvio. I just looked it up and I had remembered it wrong--we can use that license just fine. We can probably cite it a little better, but it's decently attributed as is. VernoWhitney (talk) 21:12, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

• @David notMD: I've addressed the copyright concerns above and see no issues with it. VernoWhitney (talk) 17:48, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

  In that case, good to go. David notMD (talk) 01:10, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

• for completely non-COI reasons, i think the other allium was leek. theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (she/they) 07:41, 24 May 2022 (UTC)