Old Russian Women

Siberia is an inhospitable place; cold and frozen much of the year, hot and damp the rest. Its a land that lends itself to a calm, slow, even careful happenstance. As with any such realm the people learn to live in and with the world around them, fight it too hard and you end up working harder than you need so that when you do need to work hard your too spent to do so. As such, they have many local remedies to cure your world of its ailments.

Tis said by the women of those parts that if a frog jumps into your bucket of milk then the milk won't go sour. Seems foolish enough, but apparently there is some truth to it.

Frogs secret all manny of fluids through their porous skins; these fluids help fight off bacteria that would otherwise slip through the skin and kill Mr. Frog. Scientists have attempted to cultivate these anti-biotic strands and see if indeed they can assist humans in their tiring war with bacteria.

Read on.

I'm not sure why this story made me think of Chris Achilleos' "A Frozen God" but it did.