Hadiths Of The Fly (Bacteriophages)* November 12, 2008
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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.”
Hadiths Of The Fly (Bacteriophages)*
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By G. F. Haddad
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Only in modern times was it discovered that the common fly carried parasitic pathogens for many diseases including malaria, typhoid fever, cholera, and others. It was also discovered that the fly carried parasitic bacteriophagic fungi capable of fighting the germs of all these diseases.
The Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) alluded to both facts 1,400 years ago when he said, as narrated from Abu Hurairah and Abu Sa`id Al-Khudri by Al-Bukhari and in the Sunan.
If a fly falls into one of your containers [of food or drink], immerse it completely before removing it, for under one of its wings there is venom and under another there is (its) antidote.
In a version from Abu Hurairah in Abu Dawud, Ahmad adds:
And it protects itself with the wing that carries the disease, so immerse it completely.
Ahmad and At-Tahawi add “Then remove it.”
A version with a sound chain in Ahmad states:
Sa`id ibn Khalid said: I went in to see Abu Salamah. He brought us some butter and date pastry. A fly fell into the dish. Abu Salamah began to submerge it with his finger. I said, “Uncle! What are you doing?” He said, “Truly, Abu Sa`id Al-Khudri told me that the Messenger of Allah said,‘In one of the fly’s two wings there is poison and in another, its antidote. If it falls into food, submerge it in it; for it sends the poison first and keeps the cure last.’”
Al-Bazzar in his Musnad and Ad-Diya’ Al-Maqdisi in Al-Ahadith Al-Mukhtarah (5:206) narrate from Thumamah ibn `Abdullah ibn Anas through trustworthy narrators according to Ibn Hajar in Fath Al-Bari(10:250) and Al-Qastallani in Irshad As-Sari (5:304):
Thumamah said: We were with Anas and a fly fell into a vessel. Anas motioned with his hand and immersed it three times then said “Bismillah” (in the name of Allah) and he said that truly, thus did the Messenger of Allah order them to do.
Shah Wali Allah Ad-Dahlawi mentioned in Hujjat Allah Al-Balighah that this hadith shows God-given knowledge of the many diseases a fly potentially carries as well as illustrates the Creator’s wisdom in giving every venomous species some immunity or antidotal protection to its own poison to ensure its survival.
Ibn Hajar wrote in his commentary on this hadith:
I found nothing to pinpoint the wing that carries the antidote but one of the scholars said he observed that the fly protects itself with its left wing so it can be deduced that the right one is the one with the antidote.
Ibn Hajar also cited Al-Jawzi’s remark that flies pounded with antimony (stibnite) benefit eyesight, but Al-`Ayni in `Umdat Al-Qari (7:304) cites Ibn Al-Baytar Al-Maliqi’s recipe as flies pounded with egg yolk.
Dr. Ghyath Hasan Al-Ahmad in his book At-Tibb An-Nabawi fi Daw’ Al-`Ilm Al-Hadith (Prophetic Medicine in the Light of Modern Science) (1995, 2:188-189) mentions that Dr. Nabih Da`ish ran an experiment at King `Abdul`Aziz University in Riyadh in which he created ten bacterial cultures from samples of sterilized fluid into which a fly fell without being immersed; ten more bacterial cultures from samples into which a fly fell and was immersed once; ten more from samples into which the fly was immersed twice; and ten more from samples into which the fly was immersed three times. The results showed that bacterial colonies thrived in the first set but were stunted and depleted in the second, more so in the third, and most in the fourth set.
It is established that house flies are carriers of dangerous pathogens of animals and humans. Even the critics of this hadith are forced to admit that no one at the time of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) knew that flies carry such harmful organisms. Whence did he draw the observation that “under one of its wings there is venom”?
Further, 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 were 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.
Cited in `Abd Allah Al-Qusami, Mushkilat Al-Ahadith Al-Nabawiyya wa-Bayanuha (p. 42).
More recently, a Colorado State University Web site 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]” and “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.”
So then, flies are not only pathogenic carriers but also carry microbiota that can be beneficent. These fly microbiota are bacteriophagic or germ-eating. Bacteriophages 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 1940s 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 Making a Comeback
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 United States to develop bacteriophage-based treatments, many of them drawing on the expertise of researchers from eastern Europe (sciencefriday.com, July 21, 2000).
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” (Science292, June 2001, p. 2326-2329).
Possibilities for use of bacteriophages in disease control are 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.
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.
Finally, despite the abundance of supporting evidence for the authenticity of these medicinal narrations on the one hand and for their scientific viability on the other, certain voices continue to reject them on both counts. Principle skepticism of authentically transmitted narrations that pertain to facts demonstrated by ancient and modern science, or whose scientific worth is just now coming into view, is the wont of stagnant minds and diseased hearts for which there is no cure save the mercy of Allah.
JazakAllah May Allah give you barakah. you are doing a great work keep it up.