Despite progress we always have those among us who believe the “old fashioned” ways or products are better. It has to be said that in some instances they are correct. Sadly, with each passing generation, some of this old fashioned wisdom disappears.
Progress is so contemporary and so closely a part of our daily lives that we sometimes fail to recognize that we, ourselves, may fail to keep up with what is happening.
Things that we would have considered very modern because we witnessed their creation only a few years ago may already be “old fashioned” to high school students.
In the medical world, treatment that might have been popular for a disease in 1986 may be completely outmoded in 2006. Even medical discoveries of the 1990’s may be old fashioned today.
However, over the years, and for generation after generation, a great number of home remedies for many illnesses have managed to stay alive. They have been passed down from elders to youngsters in each country throughout the world. Many of them are strikingly similar although they may have originated on separate continents among completely alien peoples.
This area of medicine is commonly called “folk medicine.” Few people will have failed to have come into contact with this term at one time or another. Usually folk medicines are the “old fashioned remedies, the cure that “Grandma used“; the wisdom of the oldster who remembers when “My old friend Betty would have died if they hadn’t used that old remedy! Yes sir, even the doctor had to admit it worked.”
Periodically there seems to be a revival in folk medicine. We appear to be now experiencing such a time as more people are becoming concerned, not only about the high cost of medicine, but also the increasing discoveries of side effects.
Basically most folk medicine is closely associated with herbs, food, oils, minerals and components found in any household. Techniques and methodology of folk medicine are especially adaptable to home use.
It is not difficult to understand how many of these medicines and treatments originated and why they were popular. Among pioneers and peoples where doctors were few and far between, or nonexistent, medical aids were the products of experience and necessity. People used what they had at hand. Sometimes what they “had at hand” are still used by our most modern medical experts.
For instance, over two centuries ago an English woman herb doctor used a concoction of over twenty herbs to treat symptoms of dropsical. Dr William Withering of Shropshire in England became interested in her success and, after considerable research, concluded that the foxglove in her treatment was the answer to her success. Medicine, derived from foxglove, is still considered an excellent treatment.
Nature has given us many natural remedies, with little or no side effects. I am sure, with more research in this area, she would be more than willing to give up more of her healing remedies.
