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Comment by msuniverse2026 | Hacker News Reader

msuniverse2026

Pretty interesting. In homeopathy mint is considered one of the most potent antidoting substances which is something that neutralises or cancels the action of another homeopathic remedy. Maybe a comment like this activates chimp brain downvote circuits in HNers but a lot of medicines start from these folk traditions and then make their way into regular medicine.

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There's tons of folk remedies that do absolutely nothing useful at all, too. When you don't have any reliable medicine, you take whatever you have on hand and hope for a placebo effect. Eventually, you find something helpful because even a broken clock is right twice a day.

There are recorded beliefs in medieval Germany, for instance, that carrying or wearing an eye from a bat will make you invisible.

How about blowing smoke up ones ass? https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

What’s the physical basis for that?

Folk medicine and remedies are one thing; traditional and herbal medicine certainly has its place and is understudied.

Homeopathy however is pure nonsense even on a fundamental scientific level.

It is unfortunate that the two get conflated.

Can you give an example of a well-known homeopathic and/or folk remedy that has been adopted into regular medicine, maybe in the last 20-50 years?

I think the closest one ("but no cigar") might be oscillococcinum, but its popularity isn't due to doctors recommending it (because they don't, by and large).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscillococcinum

> There is no compelling scientific evidence that Oscillococcinum has any effect beyond placebo.

Does not sound promising

Wonder if that might be related to why I wrote "but its popularity isn't due to doctors recommending it (because they don't, by and large)."

The premise is asymmetrical. One could just as easily ask "Which regular medicine has been adopted as a folk remedy?", to which the answer of course is largely no. There is also a (purely pedantic) argument to be made that folk remedies are more 'regular', though assuming the question here is "Are folk remedies widely prescribed in their original forms by typical modern-day MDs?", the answer, again, is largely no.

Now, to the question "Which folk medicines have a fairly robust (or at least promising) clinical basis?", there are certainly some: ginger[0], turmeric[1], honey[2], psilocybin[3], and of course capsaicin and peppermint. Not to mention sunshine, exercise, and meditation, all of which have traditional origins.

Taking a step back though, historically, pharmaceutical drugs have often been derived from natural remedies with bases in folk remedies. The pipeline from traditional medicine -> scientific study -> molecular isolation -> synthesis and mechanized production is pretty well-trodden. Aspirin comes from willow bark, morphine comes from opium, quinine (malaria treatment) comes from cinchona bark, paclitaxel (cancer treatment) comes from yew bark.

Homeopathy is BS though, no argument there. GP really shouldn't put it in the same bucket as folk medicine (it's not even particularly old).

[0] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9654013/

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36804260/

[2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37447382/

[3] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35225143/

Turmeric. Honey (on burns)- Medihoney was even used in a recent Pitt episode. Aspirin, though this is older than 50 years.

Obligatory Mitchell and Webb https://youtube.com/watch?v=HMGIbOGu8q0

Homeopathy is not a "folk" tradition, it is simply an insane concept.

I once sat next to a mint plant and it cured my cold, the farther I sat the better I felt. Obviously diluted mint particles in the air cured me.

How was your chakra alignment? That may have contributed to your recovery.

My aura turned purple

That's great news! I think that means your chakras are in a lotus formation.

We must eradicate mint plants. Over time the dilution of mint particles in the air will become so small that all diseases will go extinct

We need to research what the distance from mint plants on earth did to the Artemis crew.

Correlation != Causation. Sitting this close to a mint plant gives you a dose that is way to undiluted to have any effect. Now if you were to sit roughly two kilometres away with a gentle breeze going from the plant towards you... (but make sure that there is not anothe mint plant on the path of the wind.)

and yet it moves :^)

Does it though?

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