There's certainly plenty of BS in the traditional medicine world, but there may be a lot of remedies lurking right under science's nose.

[0] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/nasty-medieval-rem...

Out of the tens of thousands (hundreds of thousands?) of medieval so-called remedies it turns out _one_ is accidentally useful.

It would be more surprising if absolutely none of the remedies were useful. You'd expect at least one or two hits just from chance.

To be less sardonic, it's an unreasonable question because it has zero scientific basis. I've had naturopathic family members attempt to give things to children that were definitely not safe in any shape or form.

For context, aspirin and quinine both come from plants (trees in both cases, iirc). Capsaicin, the active ingredient in hot peppers, gets used as the active ingredient in over-the-counter topical arthritis medication.

Due to the hot, humid climate, jungle cultures deal excessively much with fungal infections. IIRC, quinine was a traditional treatment for malaria well before Western medicine discovered it. My recollection is this id how Western medicine learned of it -- from locals who knew it as an effective remedy.

Last I checked, malaria was becoming resistant to synthetic derivatives of quinine. Such strains were still treatable with actual quinine.

But I will not stand for people recommending alternative medicine for absolutely everything. I already had to deal with a family member doing just that, forcing random concoctions of nonsense onto a family member suffering from cancer and attempting to divert them from actual treatment. Especially when they act like they're better than doctors and can't back up their recommendations with anything remotely resembling research.

I totally agree. The anti-vaxxers, for instance, are incredibly dangerous not just to the health of individuals, but to modern civilization.

My point is that just because something is a folk remedy, or predates the invention of the scientific method, doesn't mean it's inherently without value. Rigorous scientific studies can and should be done on these sorts of things—I don't think anyone should blindly accept a folk remedy, especially one contraindicated by proper research.

But there is a certain dismissiveness amongst many folks like us of anything not invented by the pharmaceutical industry that may do us all a disservice.

I don't think that's true. The cures don't need to be invented by the pharmaceutical industry to be taken seriously. But they do need to be studied and commercialized by the pharmaceutical industry to be taken seriously.

How could you take seriously a pharmaceutical product which is rejected by its own industry? Obviously it's not commercializable in an honest way if that's the case, or someone would have done it by now.

Within that context, you're the one being disingenuous by likening it to diverting people from actual treatment and trying random concoctions for cancer treatment.