Paper and Presentation on Antibiotic Resistance created for a Medical Anthropology course I took for the fun of it. And yes, it was fun—I ended up learning way more about microbiology than I ever anticipated in writing this one! Inspiration came from a podcast I’d heard a few years ago in which a microbiologist and medievalist worked together to recreate an ointment from a doctor’s notebook (written in Old English). The ointment (made using oxgall (bile), onion, copper, and wine) wiped out a sample of MRSA. Considering the increased prevalence of antibiotic resistance, it was interesting to see how remedies from “the dark ages” were more useful than anyone anticipated and we’re now exploring, at the microbial level, what was actually at work in the ointment.