it’s not my intention to convince you that all traditional medicine is effective, just that some traditional medicine is effective, and testing the methods used

it’s not my intention to convince you that all traditional medicine is effective, just that some traditional medicine is effective, and testing the methods used by herbalists yields more results than starting from scratch in a chemistry lab (tho of course the chemistry lab comes in handy to isolate and eventually synthesize the molecules that are found to be effective) You say “So little they can prove” but I’m saying they have proven a lot, and non-western medicine just becomes western by virtue of being adaquatelty studied. We may be agreeing more than you think. “Plants, People, and Culture: The Science of Ethnobotany” is an excellent book on the topic.