Hospitals still put honey on wounds. It works.
Honey has been used on wounds since ancient Egypt, and it never fully left medicine: sterilised, medical-grade honey is used in modern hospitals on burns and stubborn ulcers. In lab tests it kills bacteria that shrug off antibiotics, including MRSA.
Step by step
- Honey dressed wounds in ancient Egypt, and medicine never quite dropped it.
- Sterilised medical-grade honey goes on burns and stubborn ulcers in modern hospitals.
- In lab tests it kills bacteria that shrug off antibiotics — MRSA included.
Source
This fact is written from the English Wikipedia article it links to, so you can check every word in one tap. Fact Drop rates that source 4 out of 5 for credibility, and the rating travels with the fact on the back of its card in the app.
Keep digging
And honey isn't the only food the deep past kept fresh…
This fact is a step in the rabbit hole Food that won't die. Follow the rabbit hole
More food facts
Food facts with more chemistry and history than the label admits. Honey does not spoil, tinned food arrived fifty years before the tin opener, and the statistical test behind much of modern science was invented to check barley for Guinness. Every fact links to its source.
- The statistical test behind much of modern science was invented to check barley for Guinness.
- Tinned food arrived 50 years before the tin opener.
- Then whaling got bigger, not smaller.
- Every vanilla pod outside Mexico is pollinated by hand, using a method worked out in 1841 by a twelve-year-old enslaved boy on Réunion.
- You can measure the speed of light with a chocolate bar.
- Avocados were built for animals that no longer exist.