The reserves of folk medicine of the peoples of our planet are fraught with a lot of useful knowledge that we do not use. This knowledge is unevenly distributed throughout the planet. Curious people (Homo Curiosum - the best of our kind Homo Sapiens) have explored the world around them, collected them for many thousands of years and have very extensive experience in applying these techniques. Even if we mean only written sources, there are medical written certificates dating back more than four thousand years.
For me, this is almost always and first of all a conversation about drugs. Of course, all traditional medicine includes a large share of shamanistic techniques for influencing the mind, strange from the modern point of view methods of physical exposure by various means. But all these methods were born out of necessity in conditions of insufficient knowledge and misunderstanding of both the structure of man and causal relationships in the occurrence and course of diseases. Everything and everywhere happens at the level of knowledge that is achievable by this time. We cannot blame them, for comparison it is appropriate to recall the “completely medical” experiments of the 20th century, such as electroshock, lobotomy, the use of cocaine in pediatrics for teething in infants, heroin for coughing, opium tincture from everything else, etc. P. There are still many scientific revolutions ahead of us, who knows what will fall on us as scientific knowledge in 50-100 years!
Healers of the past watched nature and animals and conducted real research activities. Successful recipes were inherited, the medicine was a family tradition, which was important for the survival of the genus. Village medicine was commonplace as early as the middle of the twentieth century. Village chiropractor was also then a common occurrence. In my family, from the side of my mother there were healers and my grandmother received a transmission from her grandmother (for some reason this always happened through a generation - from grandmother to granddaughter or grandson). I often lived with her for a long time as a small child, apparently my grandmother greatly influenced my future life and transmitted to me in a verbal and non-verbal way the world of these sensations. From her, apparently, love was transmitted to animals, especially to horses. I had to communicate with them a lot and treat them. Although I never received a veterinary education, I did many things by intuition and only then received confirmation of their correctness. She told me a lot, then a student at a medical institute, about herbs and conspiracies and about how and with what Russian peasants were treated in the Tver region. It was both interesting and very useful. And it’s very strange to me so far.
The great geniuses of the past, based on the healer’s practice, created the first healers and descriptions. This happened both in the east and in the west throughout the history of the ancient world. At the beginning of our era, Claudius Galen began work with which our modern European pharmacology began. Galenic and newgalenic drugs are terms well understood by doctors and pharmacists in our modern world. Distillation was born apparently in the Middle East, and the Arab world brought distillation and aromatic oils to Europe along with the conquest of Spain. The basis of our medical science until the middle of the nineteenth century was the writings of Avicenna (Abu Ali Hussein ibn Abdallah ibn Sina, lived in the 10th century) and Paracelsus (Philip Aureol Theofrast Bombast von Hohenheim, born at the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries). All of them came from traditional medicine and medicine, layering on it their own modern views and gradually turning empirical knowledge into medical science and medicinal art. All of them possessed colossal intuition and were great philosophers of their time.
But these great people gathered only what they could reach around the Mediterranean Sea, the Middle East and Europe. And besides this there is also medicine in the Far East, China, Tibet. And very little information we have about such colossal medicinal sources as the African jungle, the South American jungle, the Australian bush, the remote Pacific islands and many other places on our planet.
I do not invite anyone to rush into the arms of traditional medicine and change doctors to healers. This is stupid and dangerous in terms of common sense. However, in the pantries of traditional medicine, it is likely to find additional sources. The main thing is not to compare the methods, but to combine them. For example, in the treatment of chronic diseases, in rehabilitation after acute conditions, for prophylaxis and many other cases, methods of traditional medicine can be very useful.
Fortunately, in our time we have highly developed means for emergency care, resuscitation, surgical and many other specialized clinics, modern drugs for the treatment of many diseases, we defeated terrible epidemic infections and achieved a significant increase in life expectancy. Therefore, in all critical cases, we do not need to turn to shamanistic techniques, it’s easier and more reasonable to quickly go to the clinic. And much more reliable. The use of traditional medicine methods can be left for the period of rehabilitation and consult about its use with your doctor.
Unfortunately, it is rare to get advice on the use of herbal remedies from an ordinary doctor of Western medicine. Many Western medicine doctors do not want to spend time on this, because the rhythm of their work does not imply such cooperation. However, it makes sense to investigate the situation and rely on many published books and reference books, the main thing is that they are authoritative publications. We use many of these methods, and with a reasonable application and understanding of the clinical course of the disease, they bring very tangible benefits.
It also makes sense to pay attention to the Chinese classical pharmacopeia, which includes several thousand drugs (fixed dosage forms) of traditional Chinese medicine. This knowledge is based on the colossal experience of a huge country, and this experience is more than four thousand years old.
Always pay attention to the quality of the source of information and its integrity. Excessive promises, persistent sales attempts, network marketing are always signs of the usual desire to make money, and not bring real benefits. Real knowledge is unobtrusive, they seek and find it when the strength of your request for information is sufficient and you are ready for it - you will receive it. Either through people or through books.
This is not an easy way, but very interesting. In the BIG REFERENCE BOOK OF METHODS AND PRESRIPTIONS FOR ORIENTAL AND OTHER NATIONAL FOLK MEDICINE series of books, I will try to collect everything I can, including those recipes that I managed to verify myself. I plan to start releasing this series in the near future.
