Sometimes in life a genuine hero arrives, one who saves millions of lives through what he or she gives to the world. One such lady gave herself and her knowledge and hard work are still giving. That’s what I call a lasting legacy.
The story starts back in the 1930s with a lady, a Chinese lady. A lady who had no medical degree, no doctorate, and no training abroad. Tu Youyou was born in the 1930s. She had a unique approach. She looked back to unlock secrets that would shape the future. When you lose your way, it is always a good idea to backtrack.
Tu Youyou’s parents had always stressed the importance of education for her and her 4 brothers, but when she was just 16, she suffered from tuberculosis and this afflicted her for two years. When she returned to her studies, she knew what she wanted to do. The affliction had fueled her passion for medicine. She wanted to study medicine and help find cures for the terrible diseases like the one that had caused her so much distress.
Tu Youyou studied pharmacology and how to extract active ingredients from medicinal plants and herbs. She embarked on a full-time study of traditional Chinese Medicine.
Tu went into the jungles of Southern China where malaria was causing havoc and she witnessed the suffering first hand.
‘She had to leave her one-year-old daughter with her parents and put her four-year-old in a nursery. “The work was the top priority, so I was certainly willing to sacrifice my personal life,” Tu later said. It would be three years before she saw her children again.’
source: https://www.nobelprize.org/womenwhochangedscience/stories/tu-youyou
Tu, with her team, began reviewing ancient medical texts to understand how the ancients used to fight malaria. They had already tested 240,000 compounds to fight malaria, but none had worked. Then the team found a reference to ‘sweet wormwood’. This reference was from the time of around 400 AD to fight fever associated with malaria. Tu and her colleagues c isolated the active. Tu tested it on herself and 2 colleagues, and then tested it on 21 people in the Hainan province, and she had a 100% success rate with all of them recovering. They had successfully isolated artemisinin, the active that works against malaria.
“It took two decades, but finally the WHO recommended artemisinin combination therapy as the first line of defense against malaria. The Lasker Foundation, which awarded Tu its Clinical Medical Research Award in 2011, called the discovery of artemisinin. “Arguably the most important pharmaceutical intervention in the last half-century.”
Source: https://www.nobelprize.org/womenwhochangedscience/stories/tu-youyou
Mosquitoes are small but the most deadly of all creatures on the planet, killing more people than all other creatures combined.
See a list here:
https://www.sciencealert.com/what-are-the-worlds-15-deadliest-animals
A herb that sounds like it comes out of a Harry Potter story called sweet wormwood (Artemisia annua) has a powerful action against viruses. Wormwood has been traditionally used to fight malaria, but has also been used to fight viruses and the results are encouraging.
They awarded Tu Youyou a Nobel Prize in medicine in 2015, for her work with sweet wormwood and against malaria. They have also used this same herb as an antispasmodic and anti- rheumatic remedy.
The world continues to seek antiviral candidates to stave off future pandemics. Wormwood was extremely promising and had more powerful effects on fighting viruses than 30 other botanical and or herbal compounds.
Looking back at ancient remedies and repurposing plants and herbs for various conditions is proving to be a very effective branch of medicinal science. I for one, believe that most of the ailments we suffer from have natural powerful compounds that can heal us, if we just know here and how to look, just like Tu Youyou.
The plants and herbs and flowers of the planet bring forth knowledge every day. It is up to us to discover the secrets that our planet is begging us to unlock.
We can learn by looking back and reimagining the knowledge of our ancestors, mining the ancient knowledge stores will reveal many gold nuggets and solutions to modern problems, because we have been there before. It is written, there is nothing new under the sun…
About the Creator
Dean Gee
Inquisitive Questioner, Creative Ideas person. Marketing Director. I love to write about life and nutrition, and navigating the corporate world.
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