In the name of Allah most gracious most merciful
Assalaamualaikum wa rahmatuallahi wa barakatahu
Bacteriophages & Hadith about Fly & Cure.
Sahih Al-Bukhari HadithHadith 4.537 Narrated byAbu Huraira
The Prophet said "If a house fly falls in the drink of anyone of you, he should dip it (in the drink), for one of its wings has a disease and the other has the cure for the disease."
The important thing to note is ,the knowledge of the existence of disease and cure in house fly,which was'nt discovered 1400 years ago at the time of Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him.
the microbe responsible for ulcers and other stomach ailments can live on houseflies, although it remains to be seen whether flies transmit the pathogen. http://www.sciencenews.org/sn_arc97/6_7_97/ref1.htm
There has long been evidence of bacterial pathogen-suppressing micro-organisms living in houseflies. An article in Vol. 43 of the Rockefeller Foundation's Journal of Experimental Medicine (1927) p. 1037
stated:
The flies were given some of the cultured microbes for certain diseases. After some time the germs died and no trace was left of them while a germ-devouring substance formed in the flies - bacteriophages. If a saline solution weere to be obtained from these flies it would contain
bacteriophages able to suppress four kinds of disease-inducing germs and to benefit immunity against four other kinds.
More recently, a Colorado State University website on entomology states, "Gnotobiotic [=germ-free] insects (Greenberg et al, 1970) were used to provide evidence of the bacterial pathogen-suppressing ability of the microbiota of Musca domestica [houseflies] .... most relationships between insects and their microbiota remain undefined. Studies with gnotobiotic locusts suggest that the microbiota confers previously unexpected benefits for the insect host."
http://lamar.colostate.edu/~insects/systems/digestion/plenuryrd.html
So then, flies are not only pathogenic carriers but also carry microbiota that can be beneficent. The fly microbiota were described as "longitudinal yeast cells living as parasites inside their bellies. These yeast cells, in order to perpetuate their life cycle, protrude through certain respiratory
tubules of the fly. If the fly is dipped in a liquid, the cells burst into the fluid and the content of those cells is an antidote for the pathogens which the fly carries." Cf. Footnote in the Translation of the Meanings of Sahih al-Bukhari by Muhammad Muhsin Khan (7:372, Book 76 Medicine, Chapter
58, Hadith 5782).
These fly microbiota are bacteriophagic or "germ-eating". Bacteriophages are viruses of viruses. They attack viruses and bacteria. They can be selected and bred to kill specific organisms. The viruses infect a bacterium, replicate and fill the bacterial cell with new copies of the virus, and then
break through the bacterium's cell wall, causing it to burst. The existence of similar bacteria-killing mechanisms in two bacteriophages suggests that antibiotics for human infections might be designed on the basis of these cell wall-destroying proteins. Science 292 (June 2001) p. 2326-2329.
Bacteriophagic medicine was available in the West before the forties but was discontinued when penicillin and other "miracle antibiotics" came out. Bacteriophages continued to flourish in Eastern Europe as an over-the-counter medicine. The "O1-phage" has been used for diagnosis of all
Salmonella types while the prophylaxis of Shigella dysentery was conducted with the help of phages. Annales Immunologiae Hungaricae No. 9 (1966) in German.
"Phage therapy" is now making a comeback in the West:
First named in 1917 by researcher Felix d'Herelle at France's Pasteur Institute, bacteriophages (or just phages for short) are viruses that prey upon bacteria. They have a simple structure - a DNA-filled head attached by a shaft to spidery "legs" that are used to grip onto the surface of a
bacterium. Once a phage latches onto a bacterium, it injects its payload of genetic material into the bacterium's innards. The bacterium then begins to rapidly produce "daughter" copies of the phage -- until the bacterium becomes too full and ruptures, sending hundreds of new phage particles into
the open world.
Doctors used phages as medical treatment for illnesses ranging from cholera to typhoid fevers. In some cases, a liquid containing the phage was poured into an open wound. In others, they were given orally, via aerosol, or injected. In some cases, the treatments worked well - in others, they did
not. When antibiotics came into the mainstream, phage therapy largely faded in the west.
However, researchers in eastern Europe, including the former Soviet Union, continued their studies of the potential healing properties of phages. And now that strains of bacteria resistant to standard antibiotics are on the rise, the idea of phage therapy has been getting more attention in the
worldwide medical community. Several biotechnology companies have been formed in the U.S. to develop bacteriophage-based treatments - many of them drawing on the expertise of researchers from eastern Europe."
http://www.sciencefriday.com/pages/2000/Jul/hour1_072100.html
Research on the medical application of bacteriophages is now considered to be in its most promising stage. A University of Pittsburgh researcher said in June 2001, "Given the sheer number and variety of bacteriophages lurking on the planet, the viruses may represent a sizable untapped reservoir of new
therapeutics." Science 292 (June 2001) p. 2326-2329.
Possibilities for use of bacteriophages in disease control is discussed in the article "Smaller Fleas... Ad infinitum: Therapeutic Bacteriophage Redux" in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America [PNAS] Vol. 93 No. 8 (April 16, 1996), 3167-8.
http://www.pubmedcentral.gov/tocrender.fcgi?iid=1253
The fact that the fly carried pathophagic or germ-eating agents was known to the ancients, who noticed that wasp and scorpion stings are remedied by rubbing the sore spot with a decapitated fly as mentioned in al-Antaki's Tadhkira (1:140), al-`Ayni's citation of Abu Muhammad Ibn al-Baytar
al-Maliqi's (d. 646) al-Jami` li-Mufradat al-Adwiya wal-Aghdhiya in `Umdat al-Qari (7:304), and al-Sha`rani's Mukhtasar al-Suwaydi fil-Tibb (p. 98).
Avicenna preferred the use of a live chicken slit in two and applied to the wound cf. Ibn al-Azraq, Tas-hîl al- Manafi` (1306 ed. p. 171=1315 ed. p. 147). A similar use is current even today for camel urine according to a University of Calgary website.
http://www.ucalgary.ca/applied_history/tutor/islam/beginnings/camels.html.
In the two world wars the wounds of soldiers exposed to flies were observed to heal and scar faster than the wounds of unexposed soldiers. Even today, fly larvae, or maggots, are used medicinally to clean up festering wounds. They only eat dead tissue and leave healthy tissue alone.
The term wing in hadith is not the literal wing but part….because what if both the wings of a fly fall in the drink,what to do then?even then dip the fly because the point is dipping .Allahu alam.
Click here dictionary meaning of wing
a lateral part or projection of an organ or structure; part of a building
which projects or is extended in a certain direction.
&Also wing can mean more things like the below verse.
15:88 Strain not thine eyes (wistfully) at what We have bestowed on certain classes of them nor grieve over them: but lower thy wing (in gentleness) to
the Believers.
points taken from -- source/
Allah knows best.
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