> humans would have picked it up looong before modern medicine

We did. All modern medicine has its roots (heh) in plants. We might have distilled it down to its active compound(s) and increased the dose, but nature has it all.

200 years ago in the West it might’ve been all placebo (and literal snake oil), but the East had it figured out.

Modern medicine is good, but we’re standing on the shoulders of giants.