ANALYSIS OF MALAY MEDICAL MANUSCRIPT MSS 3136 AND REMEDIES FOR EYE-RELATED DISEASES

Abstract

Malay medical manuscripts (MMM) are ancient writings from the Malay civilisation depicting traditional remedies to treat various diseases. Unfortunately, the manuscripts are not well studied by scientists, perhaps because of scepticism with traditional medicine. To date, only 12 MMM have been transliterated and published despite the initial work that had been started since more than 10 years ago. One of the diseases frequently mentioned in MMM is eye diseases. Some eye diseases may be treated with invasive procedures such as operations, e.g. cataracts. By referring to MMM, there might be remedies to those kinds of eye problems. Hence, this study aims to transliterate MSS 3136, a manuscript kept in the Pusat Kebangsaan Manuskrip Melayu, to enhance the collection of transliterated MMM for future data mining, as well as to extract medicinal information regarding eye diseases. This was achieved by transliterating the text from Jawi to Roman alphabets using standard edition transliteration. The diseases and formulations were extracted, tabulated and numbered. The ingredients related to eye problems were analysed by comparing the findings against contemporary studies. Overall, there were 13 diseases found in the manuscript with 45 formulations. Three diseases are related to the eyes with six formulations. Eleven ingredients were identified from the formulations and five were found to have pharmacological activities related to eyes, namely Curcuma spp, Acorus calamus, Anethum graveolens, Eclipta alba and Aloe vera, which were indicated for conjunctivitis, cataract, age-related macular degeneration, conjunctivitis and cataract, respectively. The manuscript was successfully transliterated despite some obscured and indecipherable words. The diseases and formulations were effectively extracted, and comparative analysis of eye disease formulations showed that some ingredients used are supported by contemporary studies. Nevertheless, some plants have not been tested in modern studies, which warrants further research in the future. The findings of the current study also serve as the basis for natural product experiments in the pharmaceutical field.

Keywords: Malay medical manuscript, traditional medicine, complementary, herbal medicine, natural product.