Many modern medical practices began as old wives' tales or folk remedies. Honey, Mud, Maggots and Other Medical Marvels investigates a multicultural variety of age-old remedies often dismissed by 20th-century Western medicine as harmful or foolish but now shown to have real scientific validity. This book calls upon the medical establishment to open itself up to the possiblities of alternative therapies - remedies that have stood the test of time precisely because they work. The age of leeching is long gone, yet tens of thousands of leeches are used each year to re-establish blood flow following reconstructive surgery. Maggots have accidentally cleaned wounds for centuries. Now doctors use them on purpose to heal gangerous sores that are resistant to modern medicine. Honey is one of the oldest medicines in the world. In some modern hospitals it is used to heal wounds that even the best antibiotics and antiseptics cannot treat.