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Comment by luminouslow | Hacker News Reader

In medieval Europa monasteries were required since Pope Gregor to grow a number of medicinal plants to ensure that the population has access to medicine. While i am not an opponent of modern medicine, it is kind of sad how little modern humans use the remedies nature provides.

Search for monastery medicine for more info.

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Is it naïve to think that clinical trials have show that modern medicine is more effective? And the active molecules in those plants have been identified and can probably in many cases be synthesized more easily than extracted from the plants.

I think it would be naive to think that all modern medicine is more effective than herbal counterparts. Our understanding of medicine is not great enough currently to dismiss herbal medicines without investigation.

Much of our existing medicines come from scientific study of herbal medicines, and I do not think we have yet fully tapped that source of knowledge.

Additionally, I think there are many cases where an herbal medicine is a like 50% effective solution compared to modern medicine, but less than 10% the price. Many doctors may not even be aware of such treatments.

One non-herbal but older than modern medicine treatment I am aware of is soaking cuts, punctures, etc in very salty water to disinfect and help it close better. This is exceedingly cheap and helps ensure wounds never get infected.

I don’t think modern medicine has really taken a close look at synergistic effects of combinations of active ingredients. Our bodies are complex living systems, and it’s naive to think that our crude approach to pharmaceuticals — where we treat the body as a complicated, rather than complex system — is working well.

Furthermore, this kind of tech requires expertise that is not easily decentralized. As such, it tends centralize power and control of one’s health in a civilization. The civilization needs to educate and produce a few to be able to serve the many, leaving aside the number of tech dependencies in order to produce facilities that produce this, let alone the research organizations to continue studying this stuff. It does not make for a resilient, anti-fragile civilization.

It’s also important for people to be able to participate in the well-being of themselves, their family, and their community. A medicine garden allows for such participation, and it’s something we lost when our medicine was industrialized.

Yes and no. If I'm nauseous I can take a little ginger, but there isn't really an comparable over the counter anti-nausea med. There's dimenhydrinate for motion sickness, but that's different. Ondansetron is a prescription only anti-nausea med that's very effective, but obviously much harder to obtain. So modern medicine is more effective, only for the proper indication and when a 'modern' treatment is easily available. Sometimes just grabbing some ginger ale is the smart choice.

I take ginger for sea sickness and motion sickness - it's efficacy is pretty incredible!

Isn’t that one of the recognized uses for cannabis?

There are pretty significant “side effects” with that particular medication.

While I think the assessment that modern medicine is more effective, and often stands on the shoulders of these types of historically used plants, not everyone has safe access to modern medicine (either because "modern" medical treatments aren't available where they're located, lack of finances to pay for it in egregiously overpriced areas, or general mistreatment by the medical community). Using alternatives, while not as refined or high quality, is better than nothing.

Except those alternatives will kill you dead if mishandled.

This isn't a choice between "cough medicine" and "slightly less effective cough medicine", it's a choice between a controlled and inspected product and random plants that may or may not be the right genus, dose and concentration.

'Wrong Genus' seems to be giving monks and other gardeners less credit than they deserve? Sure, amateurs foraging for wild herbs could make some dangerous mistakes, but if you're intentionally growing a plant it's presumably the right one?

Frequently it's not. Seeds can be mislabeled and many plants are extremely difficult to identify reliably, much less grow to have a consistent dose of whatever active ingrediant.

In areas so remote that modern medical treatments aren't available at all, people do often still grow their own medical plants.

If lack of finances is an issue, growing your own herb garden certainly isn't the solution. These plants aren't going to replace a $500 shot of insulin. At best you could maybe replace the occasional aspirin, dramamine, or buscopan, all of which are available over the counter at price points much lower than what it would cost to even buy a bag of quality seeds, never mind soil, fertilizer, and the garden to plant it all in. (Or the time and labor to plant and tend it).

There is also the capitulare de villis[0] from around AD 800. The German Wikipedia entry has a well formatted list of all the plants and trees. Very interesting!

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitulare_de_villis

Wow I did not know that list was on wikipedia - thanks for sharing

We probably haven't lost as much as you think - we either still use it or it was bunkum (for a given application).

eg. Chamomile - still used for bad stomachs (is a costive), whether it works on herpes simplex seems really dubious.

Agreed! In a lot of areas that knowledge is still alive and well, not least in cooking. I think food can still have a lot of healing properties.

Often modern medicine is based on these plants. And of course there are modern treatments that go way beyond what we were able to achieve with just plant-based medicine.

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