Riding Medicine's Wild Frontier

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The professor recalls stories about grandparents in the Old Country who treated children's fevers by sending them to bed wearing old socks stuffed with raw onions, believing they would draw out the heat. (While that use has not been scientifically established, onions and garlic do contain sulfur compounds that may fight infections, DerMarderosian says, and were used as crude antibiotics in World War I.)

Another old folk remedy involves putting a cobweb on a wound to dry it. It acts like cotton gauze, and hastens clotting, he says. And the ancient Egyptians definitely were ahead of their time: They applied molds to wounds long before penicillin was discovered.

If you think the banana peel treatment is weird, how about the use of leeches and maggots? Forms of hirudin -- a substance derived from leech saliva -- are used as anticoagulants. And maggots, DerMarderosian says, are useful in treating deep wounds because they eat dead tissue and secrete substances that promote healing. He knows of one doctor who has done extensive research on raising maggots for clinical use, and bills himself as "Dr. Maggot."

But don't expect U.S. scientists to be rushing into new research on old remedies like banana skins -- not unless they can patent their discoveries, DerMarderosian says. "I don't think anybody's ever done a clinical, double-blind study on it," he says. And he doubts anyone will.