Medieval potion containing cattle bile kills superbug better than modern antibiotic

They pounded together the ingredients and left them to stew for days, as directed. And the resulting mash seemed to kill germs pretty well. It even killed germs that had formed a sticky mess called a biofilm — something that’s usually pretty hard to get at, even with modern antibiotics.

The researchers, who presented their findings this week to a meeting of microbiologists in Britain, sent some of the stuff off to Kendra Rumbaugh, an associate professor at Texas Tech, who tests antibiotics. She tried it against MRSA, one of the most common and vexing superbugs that’s spreading rapidly.

“It certainly works as well as, if not better than, what we are using in clinics,” Rumbaugh told NBC News. “The gold standard is vancomycin and it worked as well as if not better than vancomycin.”