In 1900, a 24-year old man coming from the family of a herbalist from Sopot left for Constantinople to learn the secret of herbs. His name was Ivan Raev and two decades later he was to make a name for himself in Italy as the inventor of “cura bulgara”, or the therapy treating the symptoms of postencephalitic parkinsonism. His treatment is based on Atropa Belladonna, a plant that is highly toxic which is why it has been used as a poison, but also as a cure.
Ivan Raev applied his belladonna infusion for the first time to treat a woman from a village near Chirpan. Seeing her laying there, her face frozen, he said to himself: “This must be sleeping sickness,” and he took a handful of roots out of his bag. In the morning the woman had stopped having convulsions and was asking for food.
Read more about Ivan Raev’s incredible story in Bulgarian treatment saves Europe from deadly epidemic
Editing by Elena Karkalanova
Holy Thursday is one of the two days in the Holy Week when we dye eggs for Easter. Tradition dictates that the oldest woman in the family takes on this important task, and the first egg is always dyed red. The Red Egg – symbol of the..
Today, the Bulgarian National Radio’s foreign language service Radio Bulgaria “speaks” 11 languages. Through the years, languages have been added, others have been dropped – something that happened to the Polish-language programmes. They were aired by..
On this day - 17 January - we celebrate the 105th birth anniversary of the legendary piper Dafo Trendafilov . He was born in 1919 in the village of Gela in the Rhodope Mountains and his whole life remains forever linked to this mystical land. He began..
Partly Cloudy
Mostly Cloudy