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Growing a home apothecary
- luminouslow 4y agoIn 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.
- bschwarz 4y agoThere 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitulare_de_villis
- luminouslow 4y agoWow I did not know that list was on wikipedia - thanks for sharing
- zasdffaa 4y agoWe 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.
- luminouslow 4y agoAgreed! 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.
- jalk 4y agoIs 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.
- mtrpcic 4y agoWhile 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.
- vorpalhex 4y agoExcept 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.
- blacksmith_tb 4y ago'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?
- vorpalhex 4y agoFrequently 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.
- Cass 4y ago
- boardwaalk 4y agoAn apothecary is a person -- or an establishment where such a person works -- not a garden. Odd use of the word.
- jeffalyanak 4y agoIt's a bit weird, but makes sense as a rhetorical device. It's sort of like saying "Growing your own vegetable market". It's not literally true, but it expresses the idea that you are growing a wide variety of things that one would find at a vegatable market.
- Tao3300 4y agoDid it make sense? Were you still able to understand?
- CursedUrn 4y agoDo those plants really cure those things listed in the article?
- luminouslow 4y agoYes, what do you think they make modern medicine out of? Most of the time a plant is the base for it.
- zasdffaa 4y agoSee my other comment. But where they don't I'm sure they make a fine placebo.
- Entinel 4y agoI'm not willing to say all of these "cure" but most modern medicines take an active ingredient from a plant and synthesize it in larger quantities. Some of the one listed here are ones I do myself. Mint for nausea, chamomile, and lemon balm to sleep for example.
- Tao3300 4y agoIt'd be nice to have some linked studies, wouldn't it?
- LinuxBender 4y agoIt would be nice but factoring in costs and profits I doubt that will happen unless some curious and incredibly wealthy philanthropist contributed to some research. About 15 years of experimenting on myself has bypassed my own personal need for studies and I am entirely off all prescription medications. It was not easy and I made a few mistakes along the way, but have very few regrets.
- JPLeRouzic 4y agoIt would be nice to mine Pubmed to search for tuples (plant, disease, administration mode, contraindications, side effects)
- hosh 4y agoBeing able to do stuff like this was the point of the semantic web. That was supposed to be Web 3.0. To be fair, according to a write up by a guy deep in the semantic web, there were several choices made that lead to the collapse of the first attempt.
- JPLeRouzic 4y ago>> semantic web In principle this is a great topic. I got some interest in the semantic web technologies in early 2000'. My conclusions were that: - The approach was extremely rigid, basically all info (data and metadata) had to be classified mostly in a hierarchical way (first order logic) with only a few exceptions when most real life cases were unable to fit in this scheme. - Companies in Semantic Web just sold search. Classification was often done by hand or by "connectors" that had to be chosen or even tailored by hand. A few years later search technologies were much more powerful and AI enabled impressive results in classification. That said some projects like Cyc were impressive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyc
- hosh 4y agoI think the query language was capable of remapping data into a different schema, but it suffered from its own design.
- Tao3300 4y agoKind of irresponsible not to list contraindications (e.g. chamomile shouldn't be used during pregnancy) as well as the lack of a disclaimer disavowing medical claims and advice.
- boomskats 4y agoSomething worth remembering when criticising traditional herbal medicine for its lack of double blind clinical trials, is that clinical trials cost serious money. It's unfortunate, but with the way things work in the western world currently, it isn't in anyone's commercial interest to invest in proving the efficacy of any of these herbal remedies. They aren't patentable (because they're plants and because there's prior art), so even if you were to sponsor a trial that statistically proves a remedy as effective, there is nothing to stop your competition - established pharmaceutical manufacturers - from jumping on the bandwagon and eating your lunch. It just doesn't make commercial sense for anyone to invest time in them. I'm not here trying to insist that big pharma out to suppress natural medicines or whatever, or that it's some big conspiracy (or that it's not). I'm just pointing out that there's a logical, commercial reason that the we don't categorically know how effective these plants are. There are many examples of this with non-organic compounds also, that have shown therapeutic potential but are no longer studied for their benefits because too old to be protected by a patent.
- LinuxBender 4y agoestablished pharmaceutical manufacturers - from jumping on the bandwagon and eating your lunch Some pharma labs already do this. Most of the 50 supplements I take are made by the same labs that make prescription drugs. On the plus side, they are very good at consistent measurements. On the minus side, some of the supplements I take were actually drugs that failed approval. They still work for what I use them for, but not for what they were intended. I've come to understand they make just as much money from supplements as they do from prescription drugs given they do not have to pass the same scrutiny as prescription drugs. I use a red leaf extract that was meant to be a blood pressure drug but I can see why it failed as it is the most powerful diuretic I have ever used, meaning one can not sleep when using it. One of my favorite examples that I do not use is Viagra. It was also meant to be a blood pressure drug but failed. It had a unique side effect which led to a marketing team coming up with the term "Erectile Dysfunction" which is now considered a medical term.
- dylan604 4y ago>It's unfortunate, but with the way things work in the western world currently, it isn't in anyone's commercial interest to invest in proving the efficacy of any of these herbal remedies. this is where i'd hope a prestigious medical school would step in to do the studies.
- oblib 4y agoI'll chime in for raw honey even though it's not a plant. About 12-15 years ago I started getting pain in my right shoulder. This went on for about 6 months. My wife and friends and my doctor told me it was "bursitis" and I'd need an operation to get rid of it. Back then going to the doctor was the leading cause of avoidable death so I wasn't keen on getting that operation (it's now the 3rd leading cause of avoidable death). I was whining about it one day to a friend of mine who was in his 70s and had been a pilot for the military and flew missions all over the world. He learned on lot doing that. He told me "Raw honey will cure that if you take a tablespoon every day for a few weeks" and explained it was actually an infection that the honey would kill. He was right. I bought some honey from a local bee keeper and it was exactly two weeks later that the pain was entirely gone. Right about that time a neighbor of mine stopped by and mentioned he was going to the hospital for an operation for the same thing in two weeks. I told him about the honey and he got some from the same bee keeper and it cured him too. Most doctors won't tell you raw honey will cure that. Most probably don't even know it will.
- BiteCode_dev 4y agoSame story but with propolis.
- teaker 4y agoGoing to the doctor is a leading cause of death? I'd love to see the literature backing that claim up. Guess we all better cancel those annual checkups!
- adamiscool8 4y agoThe figure has been disputed [0] but it originates from an analysis done by a John Hopkins University doctor published in the BMJ [1][2]: > We define death due to medical error as death due to 1) an error in judgment, skill, or coordination of care, 2) a diagnostic error, 3) a system defect resulting in death or a failure to rescue a patient from death, or 4) a preventable adverse event. The prevalence of death due to medical error leading to patient deaths has been established in the literature. From studies that analyzed documented health records, we calculated a pooled incidence rate of 251,454 deaths per year. > (1) If we project this quantity into the total number of deaths in the year 2013 (2,596,993 deaths), they would account for 9.7% of all deaths in the nation. > (2) This figure far surpasses the current third leading cause of death on the CDC’s most recent rank order. Moreover, the 251,454 estimate we derived from the literature is an underestimate because the studies conducted did not include outpatient deaths or deaths at home due to a medical error. [0] https://www.statnews.com/2016/05/09/medical-errors-deaths-bmj/ https://www.statnews.com/2016/05/09/medical-errors-deaths-bm... [1] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2822345-Hopkins-CDC-letter.html https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2822345-Hopkins-CDC-... [2] https://www.bmj.com/content/353/bmj.i2139 https://www.bmj.com/content/353/bmj.i2139
- teslabox 4y agoIn March 2020 I had a chronic cough - not an infection, just an itch that could only be scratched with a cough. "people are going to think I'm trying to kill them." An old herbal treatment for the lungs is inhaling the fumes of apple brandy from a charred oak keg. Ethanol is an antiseptic, while the apple and oak flavoring compounds help stimulate the lungs to repair themselves. Since I've started huffing on apple brandy, the itch in my lungs is much better than it used to be. The charred oak keg is important, because it facilitates the evaporation of the brandy into fumes. Someone shared that they use oak spirals in a glass container: https://www.facebook.com/EdgarCayceOnPsychicHealth/posts/pfbid0yabPN4Hur9Wu8x1zjVig5XioCGZUSghMu3PP8L8pdHu7X4yw7tofQ8wRrf6XjSA4l https://www.facebook.com/EdgarCayceOnPsychicHealth/posts/pfb... My mom's husband tested positive for the virus recently. She developed a cough, but 'tested negative' (home tests are probably mostly worthless). After a month she was still coughing. I set her up with a barrel and sent her husband to the liquor store for apple brandy. Her cough was mostly cleared up in a week. Then she got sick again, but this cleared up quicker than her September case of "not-coronavirus". edit: treating lungs with inhaled alcohol is science-approved: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22756511 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22756511
- i_like_apis 4y ago“Apothecary” would suggest some exciting plants that have interesting effects. These are mostly boring plants with nice scents that you find in many “gardens”.
- DoreenMichele 4y agoCute little article. Mostly useless. Plants and food can heal. They work different from the pills modern peoples are used to popping. A single article listing a few plants and a laundry list of things each supposedly helps with is, at best, like a movie trailer teaser to try to get you excited. It doesn't even seem to direct you to more in-depth resources.
- midislack 4y agoIt's amazing to see how herbal medicine brings out the naysayers. Uncanny.