Datamining medieval medical texts for modern medicines

中世纪的手稿包含了许多治疗微生物感染的药物，这些药物通常涉及几种成分的复杂制剂。这些天然化合物的组合可能是前现代医生为产生有效疗法而进行的实证工作的结果。然而，对中世纪医生如何使用他们可用的材料来创造补救措施的定量分析，以及对整个补救措施的抗菌活性的实证测试，几乎是不存在的。使用网络分析工具对中世纪医学文献进行数据挖掘是评估中世纪配方中抗菌成分组合的一种新方法，并从抗菌角度识别重要的成分组合。这是在抗菌素耐药性日益增加的时代开发新的抗菌素疗法的新途径。这项研究提出了与中世纪研究、数字人文和现代科学研究相关的问题。中世纪的研究可能会问：中世纪的医生是否遵循一种可预测的理性方法？当我们看到针对一种情况的不同补救措施的偶然性时，从中世纪从业者的方法中可以得出什么结论？数字人文学科可能会问：最新的技术工具如何增强我们对前现代医学文献中新化合物的发现和理解？最后，当代医学可能会问：“古老的生物”组合是否掌握着发现新的天然化合物或化合物混合物的关键，这些化合物或混合物可能构成新的感染治疗方法的基础？到目前为止，研究主要集中在从中世纪文本中挑选的单一特定食谱上。但我们可以使用数字技术，特别是社区检测和网络分析，对多个中世纪文本的成分进行更大规模的调查。这可能为开始为这些问题建立有证据的答案提供一个基础。我的主要研究工作之一是调查中世纪的过去如何影响现代对科学和艺术的理解。先前的研究与复杂网络专家合作，开发了一种分析管道，用于将中世纪文本转换为电子数据库，以便用复杂的网络算法进行分析。目标是发展一个新的合作研究方向，在这个方向上，过去的知识可能被证明与现代研究有关。这可能为未来艺术和科学之间的合作奠定基础，以寻求新的方法来满足对新型抗菌素的需求。从中世纪的药物中获得的数据是基于多组分成分的，这些成分有可能激活新的化合物，与其他成分协同反应，或以不同的方式攻击细菌。目前迫切需要研究多组分药物治疗多微生物伤口的效果。拟议的研究以系统的、数学量化的方法专门针对中世纪补救措施的多成分性质。该项目的研究将形成一个基础，以支持一个广泛的研究项目，研究不同药物的使用，并重新检查西欧的民族药理学。

Medieval manuscripts contain numerous remedies for the treatment of microbial infections, and these often involve complex preparations of several ingredients. These combinations of natural compounds could be the result of empirical work by premodern physicians to produce efficacious remedies. However, quantitative analyses of how medieval physicians used the materials available to them to create remedies, and empirical tests of the antimicrobial activity of whole remedies, are almost non-existent. The datamining of medieval medical texts using the tools of network analysis is a new way to evaluate combinations of antimicrobial ingredients in medieval recipes, and to identify significant ingredient combinations from an antimicrobial perspective. This is a novel route to developing new antimicrobial therapeutics in a time of increasing antimicrobial resistance.This study raises questions relevant to medieval studies, digital humanities, and modern scientific research. Medieval studies might ask: Did medieval physicians follow a predictable rational method? Where we see contingencies of different remedies for a condition, what conclusions can be drawn about the methodology of medieval practitioners? Digital humanities might ask: How can the latest technological tools enhance our discovery and understanding of novel compounds in premodern medical texts? Finally contemporary medicine might ask: Do 'ancientbiotic' combinations hold the key to discovering new natural compounds, or cocktails of compounds, that could form the basis of novel treatments for infection? Thus far research has been concentrated around single specific recipes from select medieval texts. But we can use digital technologies, specifically community detection and network analysis, to conduct a larger-scale survey of ingredients from multiple medieval texts. This may provide a foundation to begin to build evidenced answers to such questions.One of my key research endeavours is to investigate how the medieval past can inform modern understandings of science and the arts. Previous studies, in collaboration with a specialist in complex networks, developed an analytical pipeline for transforming medieval texts into electronic databases for analysis with complex network algorithms. The objective is to develop a new direction of collaborative research in which the knowledge of the past may prove to be relevant for modern research. This may lay the foundation for future collaborations between the arts and sciences in the quest to find new approaches to the need for new antimicrobials.The data that are available from medieval remedies are based on multi-component ingredients, which have the potential to activate novel compounds, react synergistically with other ingredients, or attack bacteria in different ways. There is an urgent need to investigate the effects of multi-component remedies against polymicrobial wounds. The proposed research specifically targets the multi-component nature of medieval remedies in a systematic, mathematically-quantified methodology. The research from this project will form a foundation to support a broad programme of research into the use of different materia medica and for a re-examination of the ethnopharmacology of Western Europe.