Happy Pi Day 2016, and Happy Birthday Albert Einstein

WHAT IS PI DAY, AND WHEN IS IT CELEBRATED?

Today, March 14, is celebrated by many in the US as Pi Day.  Why? Well, in most of the world, the date is written as day/month/year. So in Israel, all of Europe, Australia, South America and China, today's date, March 14th, would be written as 14/3. 

But not here in the US. Here, we write the date as month/day/year; it's a uniquely American way of doing things. (Like apple pie. And guns.) So today's date is 3/14. Which just happen to be the first few digits of pi, the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter.

And that's why each year, some (particularly geeky) Americans celebrate Pi Day on March 14 (3/14).  Last year, we noted, was Pi'ish than all others, since the entire date (when written the way we do in the US, 3/14/15) reflects five digits of pi, and not just the first three: 31415. Actually we got even more geeky: This day last year, at 9:26 and 53 seconds in the morning, the date and time, when written out, represented the first ten digits of Pi: 3141592653.

So that's why Pi Day is celebrated here in the US -  and probably not anywhere else. (It has even be recognized as such by a US Congressional Resolution. Really. I'm not making this up. And who says Congress doesn't get anything done?) 

PI IN THE BIBLE

In the ּBook of Kings (מלאכים א׳ 7:23) we read the following description of  a circular pool that was built by King Solomon. Read it carefully, then answer this question: What is the value of pi that the verse describes?

מלכים א פרק ז פסוק כג 

ויעש את הים מוצק עשר באמה משפתו עד שפתו עגל סביב וחמש באמה קומתו וקוה שלשים באמה יסב אתו סביב 

And he made a molten sea, ten amot from one brim to the other: it was round, and its height was five amot, and a circumference of thirty amot circled it.

Answer: The circumference was 30 amot and the diameter was 10 amot. Since pi is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter, pi in the Book of Kings is 30/10=3. Three - no more and no less.

There are lots of papers on the value of pi in the the Bible. Many of them mention an observation that seems to have been incorrectly attributed to the Vilna Gaon.  The verse we cited from מלאכים א׳ spells the word for line as קוה, but it is pronounced as though it were written קו.  (In דברי הימים ב׳ (II Chronicles 4:2) the identical verse spells the word for line as קו.)  The ratio of the numerical value (gematria) of the written word (כתיב) to the pronounced word (קרי) is 111/106.  Let's have the French mathematician Shlomo Belga pick up the story - in his paper (first published in the 1991 Proceedings of the 17th Canadian Congress of History and Philosophy of Mathematics, and recently updated), he gets rather excited about the whole gematria thing:

A mathematician called Andrew Simoson also addresses this large tub that is described in מלאכים א׳ and is often called Solomon's Sea. He doesn't buy the gematria, and wrote about it in The College Mathematics Journal.

A natural question with respect to this method is, why add, divide, and multiply the letters of the words? Perhaps an even more basic question is, why all the mystery in the first place? Furthermore, H. W. Guggenheimer, in his Mathematical Reviews...seriously doubts that the use of letters as numerals predates Alexandrian times; or if such is the case, the chronicler did not know the key. Moreover, even if this remarkable approximation to pi is more than coincidence, this explanation does not resolve the obvious measurement discrepancy - the 30-cubit circumference and the 10-cubit diameter. Finally, Deakin points out that if the deity truly is at work in this phenomenon of scripture revealing an accurate approximation ofpi... God would most surely have selected 355/113...as representative of pi...

Still, what stuck Simoson was that "...the chroniclers somehow decided that the diameter and girth measurements of Solomon's Sea were sufficiently striking to include in their narrative." (If you'd like another paper to read on this subject, try this one, published in B'Or Ha'Torah - the journal of "Science, Art & Modern Life in the Light of the Torah." You're welcome.)

PI IN THE TALMUD

The Talmud echoes the biblical value of pi in many places. For example:

תלמוד בבלי מסכת עירובין דף יד עמוד א 

כל שיש בהיקפו שלשה טפחים יש בו רחב טפח. מנא הני מילי? - אמר רבי יוחנן, אמר קרא : ויעש את הים מוצק עשר באמה משפתו עד שפתו עגל סביב וחמש באמה קומתו וקו שלשים באמה יסב אתו סביב 

"Whatever circle has a circumference of three tefachim must have a diameter of one tefach."  The problem is that as we've already noted, this value of pi=3 is not accurate. It deviates from the true value of pi (3.1415...) by about 5%. Tosafot is bothered by this too.

תוספות, עירובין יד א

והאיכא משהו. משמע שהחשבון מצומצם וכן בפ"ק דב"ב (ד' יד:) גבי שני טפחים שנשתיירו בארון ששם ספר תורה מונח שהיא בהיקפה ששה טפחים ופריך כיון דלאמצעיתו נגלל נפיש ליה משני טפחים וכן בתר הכי דמשני בספר דעזרה לתחלתו נגלל ופריך אכתי תרי בתרי היכי יתיב משמע דמצומצם לגמרי וקשיא דאין החשבון מדוקדק לפי חכמי המדות

Tosafos can't find a good answer, and concludes "this is difficult, because the result [that pi=3] is not precise, as demonstrated by those who understand geometry." 

PI IN THE RAMBAM

In his commentary on the Mishnah (Eruvin 1:5) Maimonides makes the following observation:

פירוש המשנה לרמב"ם מסכת עירובין פרק א משנה ה 

צריך אתה לדעת שיחס קוטר העיגול להקפו בלתי ידוע, ואי אפשר לדבר עליו לעולם בדיוק, ואין זה חסרון ידיעה מצדנו כמו שחושבים הסכלים, אלא שדבר זה מצד טבעו בלתי נודע ואין במציאותו שיודע. אבל אפשר לשערו בקירוב, וכבר עשו מומחי המהנדסים בזה חבורים, כלומר לידיעת יחס הקוטר להקיפו בקירוב ואופני ההוכחה עליו. והקירוב שמשתמשים בו אנשי המדע הוא יחס אחד לשלשה ושביעית, שכל עיגול שקוטרו אמה אחת הרי יש בהקיפו שלש אמות ושביעית אמה בקירוב. וכיון שזה לא יושג לגמרי אלא בקירוב תפשו הם בחשבון גדול ואמרו כל שיש בהקיפו שלשה טפחים יש בו רוחב טפח, והסתפקו בזה בכל המדידות שהוצרכו להן בכל התורה.

...The ratio of the diameter to the circumference of a circle is not known and will never be known precisely. This is not due to a lack on our part (as some fools think), but this number [pi] cannot be known because of its nature, and it is not in our ability to ever know it precisely. But it may be approximated ...to three and one-seventh. So any circle with a diameter of one has a circumference of approximately three and one-seventh. But because this ratio is not precise and is only an approximation, they [the rabbis of the Mishnah and Talmud] used a more general value and said that any circle with a circumference of three has a diameter of one, and they used this value in all their Torah calculations.

So what are we to make of all this? Did the rabbis of the Talmud get pi wrong, or were they just approximating pi for ease of use?  After considering evidence from elsewhere in the Mishnah (Ohalot 12:6 - I'll spare you the details), Judah Landa, in his book Torah and Science, has this to say:

We can only conclude that the rabbis of the Mishnah and Talmud, who lived about 2,000 years ago, believed that the value of pi was truly three. They did not use three merely for simplicity’s sake, nor did they think of three as an approximation for pi. On the other hand, rabbis who lived much later, such as the Rambam and Tosafot (who lived about 900 years ago), seem to be acutely aware of the gross innacuracies that results from using three for pi. Mathematicians have known that pi is greater than three for thousands of years. Archimedes, who lived about 2,200 years ago, narrowed the value of pi down to between 3 10/70 and 3 10/71 ! (Judah Landa. Torah and Science. Ktav Publishing House 1991. p.23.)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, EINSTEIN

Today, March 14, is not only Pi Day. It is also the anniversary of the birthday of Albert Einstein, who was born on March 14, 1879. As I've noted elsewhere, Einstein was a prolific writer; one recent book (almost 600 pages long) claims to contain “roughly 1,600” Einstein quotes. So it's hard to chose one pithy quote of his on which to close.  So here are two.  Happy Pi Day, and happy birthday, Albert Einstein.

“As a human being, one has been endowed with just enough intelligence to be able to see clearly how utterly inadequate that intelligence is when confronted with what exists.”

— Letter to Queen Elisabeth of Belgium, September 1932

“One thing I have learned in a long life: That all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike — and yet it is the most precious thing we have.”

— Banesh Hoffman. Albert Einstein: Creator and Rebel. Plume 1973

The Changing Institution of Marriage

Today the Daf Yomi cycle embarks on a study of the laws of marriage, as it begins the first page of Kiddushin.  As we have noted before, marriage in talmudic times had very little to do with love. And by very little I mean nothing. Within the tractate of Kiddushin, love, (or one of its conjugates) appears twenty-four times. Yet in only one instance is it in the context of spousal love - (and that is a quote from משלי 9:9). This was not a result of talmudic law, but rather a reflection of the institution of marriage across all cultures for about five thousand years.

A (REALLY BRIEF) HISTORY OF THE INSTITUTION OF MARRIAGE

The historian Stephanie Coontz noted that for most of history, marriage was not primarily about individual needs. Instead it was about "getting good in-laws and increasing ones's family labor force."  In ancient Roman society "something akin to marriage was essential for the survival of any commoner who was not a slave...A woman needed a man to do the plowing.  A man needed a woman to spin wool or flax, preserve food, weave blankets and grind grain, a hugely labor-intensive task." Marriage was essential to survive. So it comes as no surprise that historically, love in marriage was seen as a bonus, not as a necessity. In many societies (including that described in the Talmud), a woman's body was the property first of their fathers, and then of their husbands. A woman had to follow, as Confucious put it, the rule of three obediences: "while at home she obeys her father, after marriage she obeys her husband, after he dies she obeys her son." 

This pattern existed for centuries. Here's a rather graphic, but certainly not isolated example.  In the 1440s in England, Elizabeth Paston, the twenty-year old daughter of minor gentry, was told by her parents that she was to marry a man thirty years her senior. Oh, and he was disfigured by smallpox.  When she refused, she was beaten "once in the week, or twice and her head broken in two or three places." This persuasive technique worked, and reflected a theme in Great Britain, where Lord Chief Baron Matthew Hale declared in 1662 that "by the law of God, of nature or of reason and by the Common Law, the will of the wife is subject to the will of the husband." Things weren't any better in the New Colonies, as Ann Little points out (in a gloriously titled article "Shee would Bump his Mouldy Britch; Authority, Masculinity and the Harried Husbands of New Haven Colony 1638-1670.) The governor of the New Haven Colony was  found guilty of "not pressing ye rule upon his wife." 

It is with this historical perspective that the attitudes of the rabbis in Kiddushin (and in the Talmud in general) should be judged.  Marriage was an economic arrangement, and so it required economic regulation.  Here's just one example we have previously noted (and there are dozens): the Mishnah in Ketubot  ruled that a widow may sell her late husband's property in order to collect the money owed to her in the ketubah without obtaining the permission of the court.  This leniency was enacted, (according to Ulla) "משום חינה" - so that women will view men more favorably when they understand that the ketubah payment does not require the trouble of going to court. Consequently (and as Rashi explains) women will be more inclined to marry. Which leaves the reader to wonder just for whom this law was really enacted. 

“...the older system of marrying for political and economic advantage remained the norm until the eigthteenth century, five thousand years after we first encountered it in the early kingdoms and empires of the Middle East.”

— Stephanie Coontz. Marriage, a History. New York, Viking 2005. 123.

The Changing Face of Marriage

According to the US Census Bureau, married couples made up 70% of all households in the US in 1970. In 2012 they accounted for less than 50%. As the prevalence of married couple declined, that of cohabiting (ie. non-married couples) has increased. A CDC survey found that 48% of women interviewed in 2006-2010 cohabited as a first union, compared in only 34% in 1995. Of those who cohabit, about half of the unions result in marriage, and a third dissolve within five years.  

Current marital and cohabiting status among women under 44 years of age, United States: 1982, 1995, 2002, and 2006–2010. From Copen C. et al.  First Marriages in the United States: Data From the 2006–2010 National Survey of Family Growth. National Health Statistics Report 49. March 2012.

Not surprisingly, cohabiting partners are also increasing likely to be the site for childrearing.  In 2002 about 15% of children were born to cohabiting parents; by 2011 this had risen to over 25%. In January, a review in The Economist noted that the rate of children born to unmarried parents ("out of wedlock") averages 39% in western countries - a five-fold increase since 1970. 

Policymakers wish they could change the trend. Unmarried parents are more likely to split up. Their children learn less in school and are more likely to be unhealthy or behave badly. It is hard to say how much of this difference is due to marriage itself, however, because unmarried parents differ a great deal from married ones. They are poorer, less well-educated and more likely to be teenagers, for example. (The Economist, Love and Marriage, Jan 14, 2016)

From The Ecomonist, based on OECD data.

The discussion of marriage in the Talmud revolves around its contractual arrangements. But for most Jews today, the concept of marriage revolves around love. Economics have nothing to do with it. Western society has changed its beliefs about the nature of marriage, and so have we.  Still not convinced? Then answer this. Did your parents marry for love or money? If you are married - did you marry for love or for economic advancement (and how did that work out)? If you are not married, but want to be, what is driving you? The search for the love of your life, or the search for physical security? And if you have children - or grandchildren, would you want them to marry because they loved their significant other, or because it would be a good way to unite two families and insure financial stability? If your answers were like mine, they were closer to contemporary secular values about marriage than they were to the models of marriages described in the Talmud. And that's probably a very good thing.

Gittin 89a ~ Breastfeeding in Public

גיטין פט,א 

אכלה בשוק, גירגרה בשוק, הניקה בשוק – בכולן רבי מאיר אומר תצא

If a married woman ate in the street, or walked with her head held high in the street, or nursed in the street - in all these cases Rabbi Meir said that she must leave her husband.

In the penultimate page of Gittin, the Talmud discusses immodest behavior. Rabbi Meir declared that three displays are so immodest that  any wife who expressed them should also be suspected of adultery. One of these behaviors is "nursing in the street." As a consequence, if a wife were to breastfeed in public, she cannot stay with her husband because of the possibility (- or is it the probability? -) that she had also committed adultery. 

Let's clear one thing up right away. Maimonides, in his Mishneh Torah rejects the position of Rabbi Meir, as does the definitive Shulchan Aruch  (אבן העזר ו, טז) :

רמב"ם הלכות איסורי ביאה פרק יז הלכה כא 

יצא קול על הבתולה שהיא בעולה אין חוששין לה ותנשא לכהן גדול, יצא עליה קול שהיא שפחה אין חוששין לה ותנשא אפילו לכהן, יצא לה שם מזנה בעיר אין חוששין לה, ואפילו הוציאה בעלה משום שעברה על דת יהודית או בעדי דבר מכוער ומת קודם שיתן לה גט הרי זו מותרת לכהן שאין אוסרין אשה מאלו אלא בעדות ברורה או בהודאת פיה

...if a husband divorced his wife because she transgressed Jewish practice or because she did a repulsive thing - and he died before he was able to give her the Get (Bill of Divorce), she is permitted to marry a Cohen [who is normally forbidden to marry a divorcee]. For we do not forbid a woman to her husband for any of these reasons unless there is clear evidence, or she admits to it herself (Mishneh Torah Hil. Issurei Biah 17:21).

As we have noted many times, societal definitions of immodest behavior change over time and between locations, and are continuing to evolve. Perhaps no better example of this evolution are attitudes towards breastfeeding in a public space. Rabbi Meir's attitude, while it may appear extreme, was in fact one that prevailed until recently in many cultures - especially our own. (That is why Pope Francis made headlines two years ago when he encouraged mothers in the Sistine Chapel to nurse their children.)

Public Breastfeeding laws

1.  THE US

In a 2013 review of  breastfeeding laws in the US, researchers at Harvard noted that the majority of states have legislation permitting women to breastfeed in any location and exempting breastfeeding from indecency laws.  However, less than half the states require employers to provide break time accommodations, prohibit employment discrimination based on breastfeeding or offer breastfeeding women exemption from jury duty.

“The first breastfeeding law was passed in New York in 1984 with legislation exempting breastfeeding from public indecency offences. In 1993, Florida and North Carolina enacted laws to permit women to breastfeed in any public or private location. In 1994, Iowa passed the first legislation to excuse or postpone jury duty for breastfeeding women... Minnesota passed a law that required employers to provide break time and a private space for mothers to express milk. ”

— Nguyen, TT. Hawkins, SS. Current state of US breastfeeding laws. Maternal & Child Nutrition 2013. 9: 350-358.

Currently, women who breastfeed are exempt from public indecency laws in 29 states in the US. Fewer states - only nineteen  -  have laws encouraging or requiring provisions for break time and private accommodations where an employee can express milk or breast-feed. But 15 of these 19 states do not require breast-feeding provisions if doing so "would unduly disrupt operations". These laws not only make the lives of breastfeeding mothers (and their children) much easier; evidence suggests that state laws that support breast feeding are associated with increased  breastfeeding rates - and the health benefits that follow.

Nguyen, TT. Hawkins, SS. Current state of US breastfeeding laws. Maternal & Child Nutrition 2013. 9: 350-358.

2.  THE UK

In the United Kingdom, breastfeeding in public was addressed in the Equality Act of 2010. Under this legislation, treating a woman unfavorably because she is breastfeeding is sex discrimination and against the law.  The Act protects nursing mothers in public places such as parks, sports and leisure facilities, and when using public transport.  They are also protected in stores, restaurants, hotels movie theatres (known as "cinemas" there), and gas stations. In Scotland it is a criminal offense to try to prevent a woman from feeding a child under two in any place in which the public has access and in which the child is entitled to be. Anyone who tries to do so can be prosecuted under the Equality Act.

3.  ISRAEL

A 2007 survey of pediatricians, family physicians, and gynecologists in Israel concluded that physicians had a positive disposition towards breastfeeding but that their knowledge about it was somewhat low. The authors noted that "it is highly important to increase physicians’ awareness of breastfeeding women’s needs," though they did not address the issue of nursing in public. A 2004 report from the Kenesset (עידוד הנקה בישראל) noted that only 32% of Jewish mothers were breastfeeding their infants a six months, (compared with 50% of Arab mothers,) but the report did not address nursing in public. In 2013 a bill came before the Kenesset to protect women who nursed in public spaces. The bill has not yet become law, but its supporters hope that it will be resubmitted in the current Kenesset.   

Breastfeeding in Public - One Rabbi's Responsum

Rabbi Brad Artson of the Zeigler School of Rabbinic Studies in Los Angeles has written a thoughtful תשובה (responsum) on the question of breast feeding in public. "When it was possible to avoid baring the breast," he wrote, reviewing several talmudic passages, "it seems to be the preferred approach of the rabbis. Forced stripping [which was part of the Sotah ritual] was a sign of humiliation. And, finally, the rabbis dispute whether or not such an act as public breast-feeding is a sufficient cause for divorce (ultimately deciding that it is not)." He concluded his twelve page responsum  (which was approved 14 to 3) with these words: 

Reading the sources in the light of these considerations, I understand halakhah to permit public breast-feeding, including in a Beit Midrash or synagogue sanctuary during a worship service, so long as it is done in a modest, subtle, and dignified fashion. (This requirement would be met, for example, by using a cloth or towel to cover breast and baby, by the maternity shirts specially made for this purpose, or by nursing in the rear of the room.) It is also preferable that Jewish institutions provide places where mothers who prefer to nurse in private may do so.

Many synagogue arks are emblazoned with the words דע לפני מי אתה עומד , know before Whom you stand. In Torah study and in prayer, we are in the presence of the One whose salvation is intimated through human nursing:

לְמַעַן תִּינְקוּ וּשְֹבַעְתֶּם מִשֹּׁד תַּנְחֻמֶיהָ לְמַעַן תָּמֹצּוּ וְהִתְעַנַּגְתֶּם מִזִּיז כְּבוֹדָהּת

"That you may suck, and be satisfied with the breasts of her consolations; that you may drink deeply, and be delighted with the abundance of her glory.”

Jewish institutions, in particular, have an obligation to welcome, facilitate, and support nursing mothers and their babies.

These are words that Jews of any and all denominations should get behind.

“An amendment no. 6 and printed in the Congressional Record to establish that no funds may be used to enforce any prohibition on women breastfeeding their children in Federal buildings or on Federal property.”

— Bill Summary & Status 106th Congress (1999 - 2000) House Ammendment 295.

Former airwoman Tara Ruby photographed active duty soldiers at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, September 2015.

NEXT TIME ON TALMUDOLOGY: THE CHANGING INSTITUTION OF MARRIAGE

Gittin 67b~ Might Talmudic Medicines Really Work?

For the next three days, those who study the Talmud following the one-page-a-day Daf Yomi cycle will spend some time reading about cutting edge medical practices.  In Babylon. About 1,500 years ago. Here's a smattering of some of those practices:

For  sun-stroke

• the remedy is on the first day to take a jug of water, [if it lasts] two days to let blood, [if] three days to take red meat broiled on the coals and highly diluted wine. For a chronic heat stroke, he should bring a black hen and tear it lengthwise and crosswise and shave the middle of his head and put the bird on it and leave it there till it sticks fast, and then he should go down [to the river] and stand in water up to his neck till he is quite faint, and then he should swim out and sit down. If he cannot do this, he should eat leeks and go down and stand in water up to his neck till he is faint and then swim out and sit down. (Gittin 67b).

For blood rushing to the head

• take shurbina [a kind of cedar] and willow and moist myrtle and olive leaves and poplar and rosemary and yabla [a herb] and boil them all together. The sufferer should then place three hundred cups on one side of his head and three hundred on the other. Otherwise he should take white roses with all the leaves on one side and boil them and pour sixty cups over each side of his head. (Gittin 68b.)

For migraine

• take a woodcock and cut its throat with a white zuz over the side of his head on which he has pain, taking care that the blood does not blind him, and he should hang the bird on his doorpost so that he should rub against it when he goes in and out. (Gittin 68b.)

For a cataract

• take a scorpion with stripes of seven colors and dry it out of the sun and mix it with stibium in the proportion of one to two and drop three paint-brushfuls into each eye — not more, lest he should put out his eye. (Gittin 69a.)

For night blindness

• take a string made of white hair and with it tie one of his own legs to the leg of a dog, and children should rattle potsherds behind him saying 'Old dog, stupid cock'. He should also take seven pieces of raw meat from seven houses and put them on the doorpost and [let the dog] eat them on the ashpit of the town. After that he should untie the string and they should say, 'Blindness of A, son of the woman B, leave A, son of the woman B,' and they should blow into the dog's eye. (Gittin 69a.)

For catarrh [or a lung infection?] 

• take about the size of a pistachio of gum-ammoniac and about the size of a nut of sweet galbanum and a spoonful of white honey and a Mahuzan natla of clear wine and boil them up together...He can also take the excrement of a white dog and knead it with balsam, but if he can possibly avoid it he should not eat the dog's excrement as it loosens the limbs. (Gittin 69a-b.)

For swelling of the spleen

• take the spleen of a she-goat which has not yet had young, and stick it inside the oven and stand by it and say, 'As this spleen dries, so let the spleen of So-and-so son of So-and-so' dry up'. (Gittin 69b.)

For a stone in the bladder

• take three drops of tar and three drops of leek juice and three drops of clear wine and pour it on the penis of a man or on the corresponding place [i.e. the urethra] in a woman. Alternatively he can take the ear of a bottle and hang it on the penis of a man or on the breasts of a woman. Or he can take a purple thread which has been spun by a woman of ill repute or the daughter of a woman of ill repute and hang it on the penis of a man or the breasts of a woman. Or again he can take a louse from a man and a woman and hang it on... (Gittin 69b.)

We could go on but no doubt you've got the idea.  I doubt there are many of us eager to eat balsam mixed with dog excrement to ease our winter coughs (For those who are, remember: the Talmud tells us to go easy on the excrement.) But I will share with you the remarkable healing properties of two ancient remedies. To be sure, neither is a talmudic concoction, but their stories have implications for those too. 

“ A rich source of new antimicrobials potentially resides in medieval and early modern medical texts”

— Harrison F, Roberts AEL, Gabrilska R, Rumbaugh KP, Lee C, Diggle SP. 2015. A 1,000-year-old antimicrobial remedy with antistaphylococcal activity. mBio 6(4):e01129- 15.

A 1,000-Year-Old Antimicrobial Remedy

Bald’seyesalve.A facsimile of the recipe, taken from the manuscript known as Bald’s Leechbook (London, British Library, Royal 12, D xvii).

I am not aware of any published descriptions of attempts to test these talmudic remedies. But a recent paper described something close. It was an attempt to reproduce a remedy described in Bald's Leechbook, an English medical text written in the tenth century. This text, which exists as a single copy in the British Library in London, contains a number of remedies, including those for what appear to be microbial infections.  Here's one of them:  

Make an eyesalve against a wen [a lump in the eye]: take equal amounts of cropleac [an Allium species] and garlic, pound well together, take equal amounts of wine and oxgall, mix with the alliums, put this in a brass vessel, let [the mixture] stand for nine nights in the brass vessel, wring through a cloth and clarify well, put in a horn and at night apply to the eye with a feather; the best medicine.

The most likely clinical condition that correlates with a wen is a hordeolum, or, in non-medical language, a sty. It's a bacterial infection of an eyelash follicle, caused by a common bacterium called Staph. Aureus. They are easily treated with antibiotic cream and warm compresses. A group of medical researchers (with the help of a historian from the School of English and Centre for the Study of the Viking Age at the University of Nottingham) tested the effect of Bald’s eyesalve on Staph. aureus. They wanted to to determine if it worked at all.  If it did, they wanted to see if its efficacy could be attributed to a single ingredient, or whether it only worked when all the ingredients were combined according to the instructions laid down by Bald.  

Of course the first thing the scientists needed to do was to figure out what some of ingredients were. For example, copleac might be an onion, or a leek. (Actually, they couldn't figure out which of the two it was, so they made two variants of the recipe.) Next, they took both the recipe, and controls, which were the individual ingredients alone, and after leaving them to stand for "nine nights" as the Leechbook requires (læt standan ni􏰍on niht) they applied them to colonies of Staph Aureus. Then they counted the number of colonies of the bacteria that remained.

Two hundred microliters of ES-Onion or ES-Leek (batch A, filled circles, and batch B, open circles) or of each individual ingredient preparation was added to five 1-day-old cultures of S. aureus growing at 37°C in a synthetic wound. After 24 h of further incubation, the collagen was dissolved to recover cells for agar plate counts. The control treatment was sterile distilled water left to stand for 9 days in the presence of brass, which was also present in all other preparations, to simulate the presence of a copper alloy vessel Asterisks denote treatments whose results were significantly different from those of the control. From Harrison F, Roberts AEL, Gabrilska R, Rumbaugh KP, Lee C, Diggle SP. 2015. A 1,000-year-old antimicrobial remedy with antistaphylococcal activity. mBio 6(4):e01129-15.

To their great delight they found the recipe was only effective when all the ingredients were present. They even tested whether it was necessary to wait for nine days and reported that "the number of viable cells left after treatment with either version...was [significantly] lower when the eyesalve had been left to stand for 9 days prior to use." In other words, the potion concocted only worked when the recipe was followed in its entirety; skipping any part decreased the efficacy.    

“What is the remedy for a boil? — Abaye said: [A mixture of] ginger and silver dross and sulphur and vinegar of wine and olive oil and white naphtha laid on with a goose’s quill.”

— Gittin 86a

But the next experiments were no less remarkable. The researchers tested the potion on methicillin-resistant Staph. Aureus (MRSA) which is an entirely modern "superbug". Through the indiscriminate and widespread use of antiobiotics, this strain of Staph. Aureus has grown resistant to the usual antibiotics, and is very real health problem.  The researchers tested the onion (ES-O) and leek (ES-L) versions against a standard antibiotic used to treat MRSA, called vancomycin, using mice that had been infected with the superbug. Vancomycin, the standard modern therapy, did not cause significant reductions in viable bacteria, but "ES-O and ES-L caused statistically significant drops in the numbers of viable cells recovered from wounds." In fact when compared to our modern vancomycis, the Leechbook potions caused a ten-fold reduction in the number of viable MRSA cells recovered. Of course there's a long way between a single small study done on cell cultures and mice, and a drug that is safe and effective in humans. But this story reveals how come very old medical texts may contain treatments that work. 

For more on the the story of the discovery of Bald'eye remedy, listen to this wonderful podcast:

“If medieval physicians really did use observation and experience to design effective antimicrobial
medicines, then this predates the generally accepted date for the adoption of a rational scientific method (the formation of the Royal Society in the mid-17th century) and the modern age of antibacterial medicine (Lister’s use of carbolic acid in the late 19th century) by several hundred years.”

— Harrison F, Roberts AEL, Gabrilska R, Rumbaugh KP, Lee C, Diggle SP. 2015. A 1,000-year-old antimicrobial remedy with antistaphylococcal activity. mBio 6(4):e01129-15

The 2015 Nobel Prize for an Ancient Remedy

“ ...take one bunch of Qinghao, soak in two sheng of water, wring it out to obtain the juice and ingest it in its entirety”

— Extract from The Handbook of Prescriptions for Emergency Treatments by Ge Hong (283–343 CE).

Another example of the medical wisdom of some ancient texts was acknowledged by the Nobel Prize Committee, no less. Last year, the Nobel Prize in Medicine was shared by the Chinese physician Youyou Tu "for her discoveries concerning a novel therapy against Malaria." Professor Tu led a team that screened more than 2,000 traditional Chinese medical herbs for antimalarial activity. Extracts from a herb known locally as Qinghao, (Artemisia annua) inhibited the malarial parasite and was successfully tested on mice in 1971. Clinical studies in the 1980s established the efficacy of artemicinin (as it came to be called). This drug is now part of the standard treatment for malaria worldwide.  Yet it was first identified in a Chinese medical text from the third century CE. - the era of the Mishnah and early Talmud.

Ancient texts certainly may contain efficacious treatment, though the odds are stacked against them. Today only a very tiny number of compounds that are screened for possible medical benefit ever make it to early trials, and of those most fail. It would take a lot of convincing to get Pfizer to test a "woodcock with its throat cut with a coin" for headache.  Until then, it is best to follow the words of another very old source of wisdom, Rav Sherira Gaon, who died around the year 1000 CE. (and so lived around the time of the composition of Bald's Leechbook). 

אוצר הגאונים, חלק התשובות, גיטין דף ס"ח ע"ב, סימן שע

צריכין אנן למימר לכון, דרבנן לאו אסותא אינון, ומילין בעלמא דחזונין בזמניהון...אמרונין, ולאו דברי מצוה אינון. הלכך לא תסמכון על אלין אסותא, וליכא דעביד מינהון מידעם, אלא בתר דמיבדיק וידע בודאי מחמת רופאים בקיאים, דההיא מילתא לא מעיקא לה וליכא דליתיה נפשיה לידי סכנה. והכין אגמרו יתנא ואמרו לנא אבות וסבי דילנא, דלא למעבד מן אילין אסותא אלא מאי דאיתיה

We must tell you that the rabbis were not physicians. Whatever they saw in their day, they addressed, but these matters are not mitzvot. Therefore, do not rely on these remedies. They must not be applied until they have been tested by expert physicians, who can be sure that the remedy will not cause harm or danger. This is what our ancestors have taught us. We should not apply these remedies unless they have been tested...