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I got a surprise in a site about etymology:
Esculapius (Medicine) between Mercury (Merchants) and the Graces (Medicine, Hygiene and Panacea)
Esculapius dealt with Patients - Merchants make deals with Clients
Esculapius is linked with a Constellation of Idealistic Medical Ideas
Mercury or Hermes is linked with Hermaphroditism and Mercantile Mercenary views
Perhaps the single serpent on the Esculapian Caduceus represent one word or truth
Perhaps the two serpents on the Caduceus of Hermes represent the duality in "deals" or
"caviat emptor"
I had never before heard "Medicine" listed as one of the Graces. Now I've got to find out what responsibilities were assigned to each of the three.
After a lot of searching I found this, which appears to contradict the above material:
Aesculapius had 7 children who were all skilled in the art of healing like their father. Two of his
most celebrated daughters were Hygeia, the goddess of health in Greek mythology, and Panacea,
the Greek goddess of healing through herbs.(2) Modern readers will recognize the legacy of these
daughters in our words for hygiene and panacea.
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PanaceaInteresting, Dr, Bill, that panacea, the word for cure-all, is derived from the practice of homeopathy, which you despise!  If she became a word she must've been doin' somethin' right!
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Dear WO'N: I have never heard "panacea" having any connection with homeopathy. Interestingly there has been a revival of interest in homeopathy. Amazing what some relatively intelligent people will believe.
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Huh, Dr. Bill? Isn't "healing through herbs," herbal medicine, over which Panacea reigns as Goddess, the foundation of homeopathy? See Jethro Kloss's Back to Eden.
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Well, I don't know nothin' scholarly about this, but I have experienced both types of treatment. What I understand from "homeopathy" is "like cures like" (kinda like a vaccination) whereas herbal medicine is a whole 'nother thang, using plants in natura for their medicinal value -- although the two can and do overlap, as most independent enduring ideas do.
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Dear WO'N: As I said long ago, my grandfather graduated from a medical school that taught homeopathy, but he used it only for patients who requested it. Some of the tenets are really impossible for me to swallow. The section on it in my encyclopedia is so long it would bore you to tears, but here is a sample that I think is nutty as hell:
"Hahnemann established this principle when he investigated cinchona, the bark of a tropical evergreen tree and a natural source of quinine used to treat malaria. He observed that a healthy person who took cinchona developed symptoms of malaria, and decided that the effectiveness of the drug came from its ability to cause symptoms similar to those of the actual disease."
People who take quinine do not develop symptoms of malaria. I think that it was quite a few years after Hahnemann made that statement before the cause of malaria was discovered, and the parasites could be seen on a stained blood smear with the microscope. Before that, other fevers were wrongly called malaria.
And the other wacky idea in homeopathy is that really tiny amounts of medication can be more effective than the conventional doses. Some of the new ideas are equally absurd.
"Homeopathy," Microsoft(R) Encarta(R) 98 Encyclopedia. (c) 1993-1997 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
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While living in Mexico, my ex-husband, a GP, frequently offered the option of herbs to patients that were indisposed but not in danger. There are many teas that are effective against the symptoms of the common cold, headaches, fever, stomach ache, etc. Many of these remedies he learned from his mother and grandmother. Additionally, many of his patients were aware of or had used herbal remedies in the past. A friend of my father had a very bad case of shingles once. He went to several specialists and even the Mayo Clinic, but nothing brought him relief from the itch until my ex-husband suggested soaking in an infusion of chamomile bath. It didn't cure his shingles, but to be free of the painful itching for hours at a time reduced the stress he was suffering, which in turn may have allowed his body to conquer the shingles. I'm with Max. If it works, don't knock it.
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Regrettably it is extremely difficult to "prove" the value of any treatment. "Anecdotal" is a dirty word, but the experiences of just a few patients is just that. Look how long it took to prove that smoking was "hazardous to your health". Not untl many thousands of people had died of heart disease and lung cancer did even doctors stop smoking. Only with carefully designed studies with large numbers of patients and the expenditure of a lot of money can the value of a medication be determined.
The placebo effect which ought to be simple, is still baffling investigators.
Alternative medicine simply means acceptance of treatment not properly validated.
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