I’m a huge believer in home remedies and nine times out of ten find that they work better than pharmaceutical options. Following are some excerpts from a story about a folk remedy that has proved useful for treating swine flu.
I often use home remedies as a basis for a class activity, and there’s an web site devoted to this topic as an ESL activity: the International Home Remedies project located at http://www.susangaer.com/studentprojects/rem.htm. Neat stuff.
Devil’s dung herb could combat swine flu, Taiwan scientists say – Taiwan News Online
A folk remedy from an herb known as “dung of the devil” because of its rank smell could lead scientists to new drugs for swine flu, a Taiwanese study said.Extracts from the plant’s roots, bought from a Chinese herb shop in Taipei, were more potent against the A(H1N1) swine flu virus in lab tests than was the prescription anti-viral medicine teamantadine, a Kausiung Medical University research team wrote in a study scheduled for publication on Sept. 25 in the ACS Journal of Natural Products.
The pungent plant, Ferula assafoetida, is a flu folk remedy of long standing and was used during the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, the scientists wrote. Its individual compounds hadn’t ever been studied systematically, they said. Among other uses, the herb has also been used in folk medicine for cancer, HIV and rheumatism.