I have some understanding of antibiotics and antibiotic resistance (I’m even doing phage research with my college’s biology department). But here is what I don’t understand. Ethnobotanical research points to a wide range of antibiotically active traditional medicines. Where I live, a poultice of usnea lichen would have been a common sense first-aid treatment for Joe McKenna’s wounds. We now know usnea lichen contains the antibiotic usnic acid, but it’s use in treating wounds greatly predates that modern information. How did european culture lose this form of pre-scientific knowledge and use of antibiotic medicines?
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