Garlic Allium sativum Its English name is derived from two Anglo-Saxon words - gar, a spear, and leac (from the same root as leek), a plant - because of its spear-like shape. Whole books have been dedicated to this pungent bulb and, since time immemorial, it has been used for ritual healing and culinary purposes. Chinese texts from around 3000 BC described it as “the healing plant”, showing a long understanding of its benefits to health. The Egyptians are believed to have worshipped garlic and clay model bulbs were found in Tutankhamun’s tomb. According to Herodotus, the Egyptians also fed the slave builders of their Great Pyramid at Cheops a daily supply of garlic to ensure strength and stamina and documented its use as a remedy for coughs and colds in the Ebers Papyrus (around 1550 BC). The Romans, too, valued it as a stamina booster and fed it to their soldiers just before battle to give extra strength. The Ancient Greeks used it to treat gangrene and Hippocrates, the father of medicine used garlic vapours to treat cervical cancers in around 300 BC. They also believed that it would protect the soul as well as the body, and would leave offerings at cross-roads to placate their goddess of the Underworld, Hecate. It was so important in Greek society that a section of the market in Athens was named ta skoroda - the garlic. In the lst century AD Dioscorides wrote about the ability of garlic to de-clog veins and arteries. However, it seems that beyond a use in medicine and as a strengthening addition to the diet of workers and soldiers, the upper classes resisted it. Apicius, the writer of the only cookery book to have survived from classical times, used it very rarely and then only for food for the infirm. In the Middle Ages, European monks chewed cloves of garlic, or ‘the stinking rose’, as it was then called, to ward off the plague and in World Wars I and II, when antibiotics were not available, garlic poultices were used on open wounds to prevent further infection. Garlic has had its detractors in droves. In India, Brahmins, the priest caste and the Jain sect are forbidden to eat it, as it promotes ‘base passions’. The Prophet Mohammed was said to have waved it away, saying that he was a man who had close contact with others. In China, in 1st century AD, Hsuan-Ch’ung issued a rule that anyone who wished to eat garlic should do so outside the town. A Turkish legend says that garlic first sprouted where the Devil touched the earth and, in the 14th century, King Alfonso IV of Castille detested the stuff so much that he formed a society of knights who renounced it, on oath. Any knight who had a trace of garlic on his breath was exiled from court for one month. Mrs Beeton mentioned garlic just once in her Book of Household Management, to say that it was “generally considered offensive and it is the most acrimonious in its taste” and it seems to be a popular opinion that, until Elizabeth David and her introduction of Mediterranean food to the middle classes in the 1950’s, even the mention of garlic and kitchen in the same breath would set the delicate British aswoon. On the other hand, there are plenty of those who cannot get enough of it. The self-proclaimed Garlic Capital of the World, Gilroy, in California, attracts thousands annually to sample everything, from soups to ice-creams, made from garlic. A great medical school of the Middle Ages, at Salerno, in Italy, saw both sides of the argument, admitting that it worked against poisons - at a price: “Since garlic then hath powers to save from death, Bear with it though it makes unsavoury breath”. Ayurveda, the South Indian study of life forces, calls garlic Rasona or ‘one taste missing’, as described in the ancient Sanskrit texts. It possesses 5 of the 6 tastes: pungent, sweet, salty, bitter and astringent - only sour is missing. It credits it with being able to expel wind, loosen phlegm, as a bacteria, an antiseptic and as an aphrodisiac. Unani Tibb, the Persian medical and dietary regimen established by Avicenna over 1,000 years ago, agrees, adding beneficial effects against dysentery, cholera, typhoid, circulation and heart function and urinary stones. Herbalists use garlic to ease a variety of complaints, including asthma, nasal congestion, warts and verrucas, acne and arthritis. Culpeper, the author of The English Physitian (1652), noted that garlic had a strong and offensive smell and that it was “...the poor man’s treacle, it being a remedy for all diseases and hurts”. When the garlic is cut or crushed, allowing the compound, alliin to combine with an enzyme, also found in garlic, allinase, to form the malodorous allicin. A similar process in its cousin allium, the onion, produces the tear-provoking reaction when cut. Allicin may smell bad, but this is just about the only antisocial thing about it. This compound, in turn, is transformed into diallyl sulphide, which is largely responsible for garlic’s medicinal qualities: antibiotic, antifungal, bacteriostatic, bactericidal and a biological insecticide. Garlic also contains trace minerals; calcium, phosphorous and iron and is rich in vitamins B1 (thiamin) and vitamin C. Add to this the results from ongoing modern scientific research that show that garlic may deactivate carcinogens, suppressing the growth of tumours; that modern research has shown that it lowers blood cholesterol levels, preventing heart attacks, strokes and blood clots; that it promotes good circulation, and one could almost forgive its malodorous tendency. Over 1,000 studies have been carried out to investigate the beneficial properties of garlic and new results are published on an almost daily basis, adding it seems, more and more benefits to the list. Scientists at the University of North Carolina recently announced the results of research that indicated that people who eat raw or cooked garlic regularly face only half the risk of stomach cancer and two-thirds the risk of colon cancer. It is absorbed so quickly and effectively into the bloodstream, that it is said that if you rub the sole of your foot with a garlic clove, the smell will be detectable on your breath after just two minutes! Perhaps it is this quality that is supposed to ward off vampires, according to folklore. Luckily, there is a counter measure to the smell problem - just chew a sprig of fresh parsley for sweet breath after eating garlic - as long as you're not afraid of vampires, that is!