It could save your life. "The numerous historical references to the use of garlic and its cousins of the Allium family (onions, leeks, etc. see inset) by ancient civilizations represent one of the best-documented examples of the role of plants in the treatment of disease and the maintenance of good health in general"

"Over the course of the history of the greatest civilizations, garlic was always considered as much medicine as food; no other family of plants has been as intrinsically bound up with the flourishing of the world's culinary and medicinal cultures".

The great ancient civilizations of Egypt, Greece, Rome and the great powers of the Middle East and Central Asia held, the garlic, in particular, in great esteem and revererace for its medicinal attributes and qualities.

"The Egyptian Ebers", state the authors," a medical papyrus dating from this time, lists over twenty garlic-based remedies as providing efective treatment of a variety of ailments, including headaches, worms, high blood pressure, and tumours.The medicinal use of garlic was not confined to Egypt, but was a custom common to most ancient civilizations.

References to the medicinal uses of garlic were also made by Aristotle, Hippocrates, and Aristophanes, as well as by the Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder, who describes in his Natural History no fewer than sixty -one garlic based cures." The authors also site their own study that is particularly encouraging with respect to brain tumours."For example," they state, " we can see that the addition of extracts of garlic, beets, and certain members of the cabbage family, such as kale, triggers the whole-sale cessation of the growth of cancer cells isolated from a medulloblastoma, a very aggressive brain tumour".