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Haha, lookup what “hysteria” was and the medical “treatment” devised to “cure” it. We might have a long way yet to go as a species, but we’ve sure come a long

by zaroth 2y ago

Haha, lookup what “hysteria” was and the medical “treatment” devised to “cure” it. We might have a long way yet to go as a species, but we’ve sure come a long way.

jiggawatts 2y ago
We still have chiropractors and Chinese herbal medicine dispensaries.
- yosito 2y ago
  The thing that bothers me is that we've had these things for so long, but no one does any actual research about them, so we still can't say that we know they don't work, but only that we don't know that they work. And "we don't know that they work" doesn't really convince people who say "thousands of years of tradition say that they work, and my great aunt was healed by it".
  - jiggawatts 2y ago
    Research has been done, and has shown herbal medicines to not work[1], to nobody's surprise. Sure, there's not a huge amount of research into the matter, but this is comparable to the small amount of research time sunk into verifying if prayer can cure cancer. Nonsense like "rhino horns look like an erect penis, so surely they will give you erections" should be dismissed without further discussion, but unfortunately a multi-billion dollar industry continues to wipe out rare and endangered species for magic cures that can't possibly work. [1] A large subset of such medications are basically stimulants that make patients feel better but do more harm than good. My father in law was scammed this way by a herbal doctor that gave him such huge doses as to cause heart damage.
    - yosito 2y ago
      > Research has been done, and has shown herbal medicines to not work Plenty of herbal medicines are effective. Which is why we need research to understand which ones are, and which ones are bullshit.
      - jiggawatts 2y ago
        We have done this research, and the result is called "medicine" now instead of "herbal medicine". Aspirin used to be extracted from tree bark. Opium and morphine is the juice of the opium poppy. Penicillin is from a mould. Botox is from a bacteria. Heck, there's an entire subset of the pharma industry running around testing every damned plant, weed, and flower to see if it has some sort of useful effect! There's even been movies made about this! https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104839/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104839/ We've tested herbal medicines, and use the pure extracts from those that do actually work every day in every country. That doesn't mean the guy selling dried tiger penis should be allowed to open shop next to a pharmacy and claim mysterious properties "unknown to science".

by zaroth 2y ago

Haha, lookup what “hysteria” was and the medical “treatment” devised to “cure” it. We might have a long way yet to go as a species, but we’ve sure come a long way.

jiggawatts 2y ago

We still have chiropractors and Chinese herbal medicine dispensaries.

yosito 2y ago
The thing that bothers me is that we've had these things for so long, but no one does any actual research about them, so we still can't say that we know they don't work, but only that we don't know that they work. And "we don't know that they work" doesn't really convince people who say "thousands of years of tradition say that they work, and my great aunt was healed by it".
- jiggawatts 2y ago
  Research has been done, and has shown herbal medicines to not work[1], to nobody's surprise. Sure, there's not a huge amount of research into the matter, but this is comparable to the small amount of research time sunk into verifying if prayer can cure cancer. Nonsense like "rhino horns look like an erect penis, so surely they will give you erections" should be dismissed without further discussion, but unfortunately a multi-billion dollar industry continues to wipe out rare and endangered species for magic cures that can't possibly work. [1] A large subset of such medications are basically stimulants that make patients feel better but do more harm than good. My father in law was scammed this way by a herbal doctor that gave him such huge doses as to cause heart damage.
  - yosito 2y ago
    > Research has been done, and has shown herbal medicines to not work Plenty of herbal medicines are effective. Which is why we need research to understand which ones are, and which ones are bullshit.
    - jiggawatts 2y ago
      We have done this research, and the result is called "medicine" now instead of "herbal medicine". Aspirin used to be extracted from tree bark. Opium and morphine is the juice of the opium poppy. Penicillin is from a mould. Botox is from a bacteria. Heck, there's an entire subset of the pharma industry running around testing every damned plant, weed, and flower to see if it has some sort of useful effect! There's even been movies made about this! https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104839/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104839/ We've tested herbal medicines, and use the pure extracts from those that do actually work every day in every country. That doesn't mean the guy selling dried tiger penis should be allowed to open shop next to a pharmacy and claim mysterious properties "unknown to science".