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生产有效药物而进行的经验性工作的结果。然而，关于中世纪医生如何使用他们可用的材料来创造药物的定量分析，以及对整个药物的抗菌活性的经验测试，几乎不存在。使用网络分析工具对中世纪医学文本进行数据挖掘是一种新的方法，可以评估中世纪配方中抗菌成分的组合，并从抗菌角度识别重要的成分组合。这是一种新的途径，以开发新的抗菌药物治疗的时间增加抗菌药物resistance.This study raises questions relevant to medieval studies，digital humanities，and modern scientific research.中世纪的研究可能会问：中世纪的医生遵循可预测的理性方法吗？当我们看到不同的补救措施的条件下，什么结论可以得出关于中世纪的实践者的方法？数字人文可能会问：最新的技术工具如何增强我们对前现代医学文本中新化合物的发现和理解？最后，当代医学可能会问：“古代生物”组合是否是发现新的天然化合物或化合物鸡尾酒的关键，这些化合物可能构成感染新疗法的基础？到目前为止，研究一直集中在从选定的中世纪文本的单一具体食谱。但我们可以使用数字技术，特别是社区检测和网络分析，对多种中世纪文本的成分进行更大规模的调查。这可能为开始建立这些问题的证据答案提供了基础。我的主要研究工作之一是调查中世纪的过去如何为现代对科学和艺术的理解提供信息。以前的研究，与复杂网络专家合作，开发了一个分析管道，用于将中世纪文本转换为电子数据库，以便使用复杂网络算法进行分析。其目的是开发一个新的合作研究方向，其中过去的知识可能被证明是相关的现代研究。这可能为未来艺术和科学之间的合作奠定基础，以寻找新的方法来满足对新抗菌剂的需求。中世纪药物的数据是基于多组分成分，这些成分有可能激活新化合物，与其他成分协同反应，或以不同的方式攻击细菌。迫切需要研究多组分治疗对多微生物伤口的影响。拟议的研究专门针对中世纪补救措施的多组分性质，在一个系统的，定量的方法。该项目的研究将形成一个基础，以支持对不同药物的使用进行广泛研究的方案，并重新审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.