[belenos46]

Lots of examples. 'Thorsons Introductory Guide to Medical Herbalism' is, for example, both required reading for many modern medical degrees and a collection of hundreds (of documented; more realistically, thousands) of years of the medical practice of herbalism.

And if you want some anecdata, I've used plenty of preparations from that text for nausea, fever, menstrual cramps (not mine, clearly), poor clotting, sinus congestion, and likely some things that are slipping my mind.

Plants are where we get a lot of medicines from, and while modern pharmaceutical companies may prefer that information not get spread around (it's basically the whole reason we don't have a widespread practice of western medical herbalism in the US), but the fact remains that if you know how to get the medicine out of the plant, it's still totally possible to do so.

[tekla]

> it's basically the whole reason we don't have a widespread practice of western medical herbalism in the US

Lol, the west doesn't do herbalism because if it works, we just call it medicine.

[sonicshadow]

The west doesn’t believe in herbal remedies because they aren’t patentable by the pharma industrial complex to make $$$

[tekla]

No, its because the west rejects the "wooo" and makes a pill out of the part that works.

[pengaru]

> No, its because the west rejects the "wooo" and makes a pill out of the part that works.

No, the west makes a pill out of the part that's commercially profitable, which is a very different set of criteria than "works". Things like shelf life/stability, cost and availability, dose:response curves that are very predictable for the entire human population, etc.

What goes into pills has far more to do with what works for business than what works for people.

[drekk]

It's overly reductionist to assume that all herbal remedies are the result of 1, maybe 2 active ingredients. The incentive for making a pill is less about efficacy and more about patentability. I can't patent camphor, but I can patent a 3% menthol & 3% camphor ointment suspended in a gel base (Fast Freeze).

I don't think it's fair to say the west as a supposed monolith rejects "woo", especially given the popularity of pseudoscience re: vaccines, homeopathy, Reiki, acupuncture, cleanses, etc.

I'm reminded of the great anthropological paper titled Body Ritual Among the Nacirema by Horace Miner: https://www.sfu.ca/~palys/Miner-1956-BodyRitualAmongTheNacir...

[sonicshadow]

It sounds like you’re implying there is Western medicine and “pseudoscience”.

In other parts of the world they call this crap “white people medicine” and stick with the natural remedies. It just lacks a shiny seal of approval from the FDA/EU regulatory body, which makes it “pseudoscience”. We all know that science is totally incorruptible and always true though!

[DropInIn]

And the underlying racism shines through bright as day.

Well done, you gone played yourself.

[sonicshadow]

Why take a thing that’s been known for thousands of years to be perfectly safe, when you can take this thing invented in a lab and tested on mice for 10?

[Drakim]

> George Washington woke up at 2 a.m. on Dec. 14, 1799, with a sore throat. After a series of medical procedures, including the draining of nearly 40 percent of his blood, he died that evening.

Old medicine and medical treatments were absolutely lethal compared to what we have in modern times.

[hutzlibu]

We certainly improved, but in 1799 I think it was already the age of pseudoscientific medicine, where people thought they were superior to traditional herbalist, simply because they read some books. In other words, I don't think any traditional medicine man would have done that treatment.

(Apart from that, I surely go to a hospital if I am really sick, but for everything light, I rather find something else, than some drug, where I don't know if it is helping me, or the doctors pension fund)

[suoduandao3]

Iatrogenic deaths are still incredibly high today. Modern medicine is the evolution of the doctors regarded highly enough to treat the president, not the people who filled their prescriptions in the woods.

[sonicshadow]

Who tf is that

[golergka]

Earth has been known to be flat, women and POC have been known to be inferior and homosexuality has been known to be a sin.

But thankfully, humanity moves on, and among other innovations, came up with such things as statistical methods and drug testing. But if you so desire, you're absolutely free to distrust modern western medicine — after all, a lot of prominent people do, for example, late Steve Jobs.

[sonicshadow]

Man big pharma did a number on you huh

[lelanthran]

Nonsense. They happily sell out of patent medications by the dumpster load.

They test it, if it works they sell it, else they reject it.

[strken]

America doesn't prescribe some remedies, herbal or otherwise, because they aren't FDA approved due to an unnecessarily burdensome approval process that costs tens of millions of dollars to navigate, alongside a culture of civil lawsuits that causes doctors to act with excessive caution.

[asdff]

"Essence of willow bark" is an example of an herbal remedy the pharma industrial complex produces with no patent currently: generic aspirin.