most pharmaceuticals today, are simply the refine, filtered active ingredients from former "herbal" remedies.

herbalist where using "foxglove"--in latin digitalis-- to treat "dropsy" in the middle ages.. many cases of what they called dropsy where visible edema, caused by congestive heart failure.. which to day is treated by --digitalis...a drug that contains the refined active ingredient -- found in the herb foxglove!

repeat for willow bark as a treatment for fevers, and (though much less effective) cherry bark for soothing sore throats and reducing coughs.

treatments persist because practitioner's ( and sometimes patients) think they work. and modern medicine, for all its claims to scientific, blind studies has persisted in using treatment proven to be either ineffective, or more dangerous than the ailment they are treating.

routine hysterectomies, radical mastectomies, prefrontal lobotomies, shock treatment, sedatives used during birth delivery that cause hallucination's, drugs to treat miscarriages, --treatement and drugs that were never proven effective, and had a long term impact,(especially on the mother, and child ) continued to be used simple because some doctors believed them to work, even when the facts proved otherwise.

while individual doctors might be competent and caring, modern medicine is far from perfect, and has had glaring examples of creating and using treatments that are worthless and dangerous.


my other obsession