As with many folk practices, the medicinal lore of the date was compiled from patient observation perhaps over generations, hearsay and accumulated knowledge passed on through successive generations. That by no means invalidates the knowledge or indeed the efficacy of the fruit or its decoctions and derivatives.

Modern science does not change the value of what the date may or may not do, but can isolate the active ingredients and identifies them so that they might be identified, their medicinal attributes logged and perhaps manufactured. It answers the question of questions; Why?

A particularly good example of the eventual explanation of a long established custom is the tradition among Muslims parents to put a piece of well-chewed date or other available sweet fruit in the mouth of a newborn baby.

Muslims do this following the recorded practice of the Prophet (peace be upon him). The practice followed for religious or cultural reasons, however, has a solid foundation in scientific fact that the followers of tradition could not have known about.

The practice was well known. Abu Buradah reported from Abu Musa, who said: “I had a newborn baby; I took him to the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), who called him Ibrahim. The Prophet chewed a date then he took it and rubbed the inside of the baby’s mouth with it.”

Placing a sugary substance in a newborn baby’s mouth was believed to reduce pain and the heart rate of the child, for example during the procedure of heel-pricking and circumcision.

In 1995, the British Medical Journal (No 6,993, June 10, 1995) published a study carried out in the postnatal ward in the Leeds General Infirmary in England. It confirmed the practice had repeatable and direct effects that confirmed the traditional belief that a sugary substance in a newborn’s mouth reduces crying and probably the perception of pain.

Dates have a very high sugar content with Deglet Noor dates weighing in at a hefty 63.3 percent, about the same as the average hard candy. Depending on the species and the soils it grew in, the sugar breakdown has been established as about glucose, fructose and sucrose content as 32, 32.7, and 8.2 percent respectively for the date fruit.

A Medjool date for example contains 31,954 milligrams of fructose per 90 gram serving, according to NutritionData.com. In effect, three dates can supply up to 20 percent of your daily-recommended intake of fructose, according to the US Department of Agriculture.

The Leeds research paper reported that 60 healthy infants of one to six days old in a double blind randomized and placebo controlled trial were given two milliliters of placebo and various dilute sucrose solutions placed on their tongues two minutes before the heel prick test. The observers measured the length of time the child cried after the heel prick.

There was, the researchers noted, “a significant reduction in overall crying time and heart rate after three minutes in the babies given 50 percent sucrose as compared with controls. This was maximal one minute after heel prick in the 50 percent sucrose group and became statistically significant in the 25 percent sucrose group at two minutes. There was a significant trend for a reduction in crying time with increasing concentrations of sucrose over the first three minutes.”

They concluded that the concentrated sucrose seemed to reduce crying and that it might be a “useful and safe analgesic for minor procedures in neonates.”

Some of the more widespread and less well empirically researched remedies the date supplies range from the remedy of potassium deficiency, dates have a relatively high level of potassium, through its efficaciousness as a cure for kidney stones to its use as an aphrodisiac.

The tannin in dates is said to act as a cleansing agent for intestinal trouble, and in the form of an infusion, decoction, syrup or paste, is administered as a treatment for sore throat, cold, and bronchial catarrh.

The list of conditions influenced by the administration of the date or its derivatives is long and at the fringes journeying into the realms of fantasy, with claims of curing venomous snake bites to cures for alcoholism. With the wealth of folkloric tradition that surrounds the date, it might be a rich seam of as yet undiscovered empirical fact and as such would be worth exploring.

They are, whatever the myths that surround them, a fine food source, easily digestible and a source of a good selection of sugars, proteins and trace elements.

The truly remarkable thing is that a fruit as valuable, wholesome and simply as delicious as a date can grow in saline, poor quality soil and withstand arid conditions that would kill the vast majority of fruit bearing plants. And as the Arab proverb says: “Better a handful of dry dates and content therewith than to own the gate of peacocks and be kicked in the eye by a broody camel.”

Says it all, really.