There are sadly still a lot of things we treat roughly in the same way, from most unoperable cancers to even strong acne (isotretinoin may not be "poison" in the commonly understood way, but the underlying concept of how and why we take it is still pretty much the same).

When you see scifi movies and shows where any ailment can be cured with 5 minutes in a machine, it's still a far away dream from where we are now. In a way, it's also full of hope.