Antimicrobial agents in Egyptian folk medicine

Aninvestigation was made into the presence of antimicrobia.l substances contained in certain Egyptian folk medicines. Seeds of cumin and caraway and leaves of guava, camphor, mint and tiliso and flowers of several herbaceous plants contained antimicrobial agents. These agents could be extracted from guava and camphor leaves by benzene, chloroform, ethyl ether and ethyl acetate and from cumin and caraway seeds by ethyl ether and alcohol and from the herbaceous flowers and mint leaves by benzene, ethyl ether and alcohol

presence of antimicrobial substances in certain green algae

The antimicrobial principles in three algae Chlorella vulgaris, Scenedesmus acutus and Colelastrurm probnscideum were extracted using a successive solvent system. The extracts were bioassayed against three different bacteria. The three algae contained different antimicrobial principles most of which were soluble in ethyl ether. The Gram negative Escherichia coli exhibited high tolerance to the antimicrobial principles compared to the Gram positive Staphylococcus aureus. No stimulating effects were recorded in the examined extracts