Sumerians, Chinese, ancient Indians, Egyptians, Romans, Greeks, Tibetans, Slavic, Arabic and the list goes on and on naming hundreds of cultures that used garlic not only for its known culinary properties but for its health benefits and as a well-trusted universal folk remedy for the treatment of various illnesses and ailments. Some cultures still know garlic as ‘Russian penicillin’, ‘natural antibiotic’, ‘vegetable viagra’, ‘plant talisman’, ‘rustic's theriac’ and ‘snake grass’ [5,6].

In the past, garlic was used as a folk remedy during various epidemics such as typhus, dysentery, cholera, influenza, and whenever an epidemic has emerged. Garlic has been the first preventive and curative remedy [5,6]. Now, back to the subject, who didn't heard about the saying that onions and garlic collect and kill the flu (influenza) virus spread since its origins time ago in the 1919? I found it interesting enough to enter a little bit deeper and see if there were probably other reasons to believe garlic and onions really got this claimed anti-viral and anti-bacterial properties. But let's see what we found about Garlic (Allium sativum) and onion (Allium cepa), it may surprise some of us at the end. Image: Red onions & garlic by Anna Majkowska under Creative Common license (CC BY 2.0).

ALLIUM SATIVUM

Family: Amaryllidaceae
Genus: Allium
Common name: Garlic.

Echinacea purpurea, a flower commonly known as conflower, has been widely known for many of its properties and health benefits, from the most commonly known as the treatment of common colds, to others not so popular as the use of Echinacea for the treatment of acne, to treat dizziness, snake bites and as an anti-infective agent until the advent of modern antibiotics. The most common use of Echinacea has been as a prophylactic treatment for upper respiratory infection [6]. Echinacea extracts possessed significant antiviral activity [1].

Many have been the treatments and remedies claimed to be effective against skin related problems as acne, a skin condition caused by inflammation that is mostly experienced during adolescence but that may also happen at later stages in life. We have published some of these traditional herbal remedies in recent articles, however it hasn't been until recently that we read about other possible traditional herbal remedies to fight acne, namely the use of Echinacea purpurea (Purple conflower).

ECHINACEA PURPUREA

Family: Asteraceae
Genus: Echinacea
Common name: Eastern purple coneflower, Purple coneflower, red sunflower and rudbeckia.

Origanum vulgare (oregano), a plant already known to have many benefits for your health and to exert anti-cancer properties in many types of human cancers, as for example human chronic myelogenous erythroleukaemia (K562) and bladder carcinoma (RT112) [7], has been recently the subject of a study, permformed by Long Island University, on the effects of an active constituents found on oregano, namely carvacrol [9], for the treatment of prostate cancer, the second leading cause of cancer death in American men.

The results of this research, presented at the Experimental Biology 2012 conference in San Diego on April 24, an annual gathering of six scientific societies and draws more than 13,000 scientists and exhibitors from around the world, are explained in this article and are amazing. Image: Bluemenbiene, under (CC BY 2.0) license.

ORIGANUM VULGARE 

Family: Lamiaceae
Genus: Origanum 
Common names: Oregano. Italian: Herba acciuga, origano. English: Wild marjoram, oregan. French: Marjolaine bâtarde, Marjolaine sauvage, Origan.

Thyme (Thymus vulgaris), a perennial herbaceous plant from the Lamiaceae family that grows up to approximately 40 cm tall [1] and is used nowadays as a flavoring agent of the Mediterranean diet.

Thyme was used by the Greeks in their baths and by the Egyptians who more than 2000 years ago used it to embalm their faraons and ancestors, probably due to the amount of antimicrobial active constituents found on Thyme essential oils, its most documented property and a quality that shares with other essential oils as for example lavender essential oil [2], both of them active against multi-drug resistant clinical strains of Escherichia coli bacteria [3,4].

Recently, researchers from Leeds Metropolitan University, driven by these known antibacterial properties of Thyme, tested the effects of this herb, marigold and myrrh tinctures on Propionibacterium acnes, the bacterium that causes acne by infecting skin pores and forming the well-known spots so characteristic from this bacterial infection. The results were published in a news release in the Society for General Microbiology website and are quite encouraging while not surprising. Image left: Wild thyme (NH) by David Short under Creative Commons license (CC BY 2.0).

THYMUS VULGARIS

Family: Lamiaceae
Genus: Thymus
Common name: Thyme.