Moldy Bread Heals Wounds
"The old folk practice of pressing mould-covered bread onto a cut or wound to help it heal."
Documented as far back as the Egyptian Ebers Papyrus (c. 1550 BC), which records moldy bread being applied directly to infected wounds, and the same basic practice shows up independently in ancient Serbian, Chinese, and Greek folk medicine. The tradition survived for millennia, well into the modern era, some European households kept a loaf of deliberately moulded bread in the kitchen specifically for treating cuts. The mould involved is very often a Penicillium species, the exact genus that produces real antibacterial compounds, meaning the folk practice was, unknowingly, applying crude penicillin centuries before Alexander Fleming formally identified and isolated it in 1928.