From the Library

“Two hundred and fifty years ago, Arab miniaturists were in the custom of staring at the western horizon at daybreak to alleviate the understandable and eternal anxieties about going blind shared by all miniaturists; likewise, a century later in Shiraz, many illustrators would eat walnuts mashed with rose petals on an empty stomach in the mornings. Again, in the same era, the elder miniaturists of Isfahan who believed sunlight was responsible for blindness to which they succumb one by one, as if to the plague, with work in a half-dark corner of the room, and most often by candlelight, to prevent direct sunlight from striking their worktables. At day’s end, in the workshops of the Usbek artists of Bukhara, master miniaturists would wash their eyes with water blessed by sheikhs.” (

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Recently researchers have discovered a previously undescribed micro-organism that lives within the tissues of an Australian plant know as snakevine (Kennedia nigriscans). This micro-organism is a species of Streptomyces, a genus that has been the source of more than 50 licensed antibiotics. In cell culture these new compounds have demonstrated a broad activity against both bacteria and fungi. This micro-organism may represent a new source for clinically useful antibiotics. (

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