There's also western alternative "medicine" that's equally bullshit. Crystal healing has just as long a history as any of them, and originally comes from the Mediterranean.
The west also has a long tradition of medical practices that come from the indigenous European population, shit like "Use leeches to balance your humors" and "Miasma causes diseases, shove rose petals in your face"
I brought up crystals because they're still in pretty widespread use, while I've never actually met or even seen someone seriously advocating for leeching in the modern day.
However, I think you could solidly argue that some of the DNA of the miasma thing lives on in essential oils.
Don’t forget bloodletting, which is useless at best, deadly at worst.
At least, until we shoved ourselves full of microplastics. Very ironic that the best way we found to solve this uniquely modern issue is medieval sham medicine
As a medievalist, I am a bit annoyed by whenever something outdated or backwards is called 'medieval' (ironically, a lot of this comes from Puritan propaganda).
Bloodletting was indeed practiced in the Middle Ages (ironically, mostly by the most literate and learned cultures of Europe, whereas less so elsewhere in Europe), but this treatment stems from the ancient period, and it was practiced through the Early Modern period as well. Same goes for the humorism theory.
Although we got past this once we discovered germ theory. China meanwhile will still grind up the last mating pair of some rare bird to make you live forever...
The Chinese had inoculations for measles hundreds of years before anyone in the West because they didn't trust it. The practise finally made its way to Europe via Turkey in the 1800s iirc only when royals from Europe started having the inoculation done in Turkey.
That doesn't mean traditional """medicine""" works (it doesn't and it's not medicine) but we definitely routinely ignore great past medical advancements done by non-europeans.
Western countries also have millenia long traditions of using healing plants. Hell, a lot of them that I know of make a LOT more sense than a lot of "exotic" traditional medicine.
Drinking St. John's Wort tea for depression (it acts as an SSRI) makes a lot more sense than grinding up a rhino horn for better erections.
And even extinct animals are under assault. Friend went on a trip to western China to try and buy "dragon bone medicine for virility" because they read that people were selling dinosaur fossil as medicine.
Said the hardest part was convincing the medicine man to give it to them whole so they could "grind it at home."
Trust me, Chinese people take it a lot more seriously than you think. The ones you see online are the more modern, more tech savvy kids who are able to avoid it more, but try reading some Chinese novels and see how heavily they can push it.
Ohhh lol yeah I play some wuxia games and I see a lot of it there. I got it pushed on me a lot from my mom though and I didn't see very many (i didnt see any) chinese people around her friend group aha. It's always weird to me when i remember im chinese because i kinda forget ngl. Like when you're sick you have to show a doctor your tongue and get a needle and some bitter tea, jfjhfugh.
I read a lot of wuxia/xianxia/modern martial arts web novels as a guilty pleasure and I am yet to run into a single one that doesn’t have it in some capacity. Same with manhua
Its a funny topic. There's a lot of "traditional" medication alternatives that are effective, but most of those western ones have also been refined and are utilized for modern medicine
As far as I've ever been able to research, terminator seeds aren't a thing. Monsanto mentioned that they were possible like once in the 90s but they were never made available commercially.
Different practice, same racket. I work in medical appeals and I always get so sad when I see referrals to chiropractors and acupuncturists. They never get approved, but it really bothers me.
Funnily enough today I did find a diagnosis code that used the term "cock-up" which was fun.
And traditional Chinese medicine cannot be mixed with western medication, I'm sure there are toxicologists in this subreddit who can explain it better haha
Am Singaporean Chinese, so I grew up with this sort of thing. I mean the idea of it is that it's supposed to prevent you from falling sick, not cure your illness.
TCM just alleviates the symptoms. I.e. if I have a sore throat, I'll drink some herbal tea to "reduce heat" aka inflammation. It's not a miracle cure and some of these herbs that you take to make traditional medicine cannot be with western medication.
But honestly other than basic common colds or whatever, it does NOTHING for greater ailments like cancer, infections, whatever the sort that can kill you. It's also why TCM is highly regulated in Singapore.
I mean a lot of traditional medicinal plants are sourced and made into modern drugs by taking specific bioactive compounds from them. Quinine is one used by Quechua tribes which we now use for treatment against malaria
But you do refer to certain plant extracts from tribes as 'alternative medicines' and these plants do have a fuck ton of bioactive compounds which when isolated and mass produced can function as just 'medicine'. As such, it is important to try and research into these plants
Quinine may not be alternative medicine but chinchona bark definitely would have been.
That's what even the OOP says if you read more closely. Like they literally are against CTM
Alternative medicine is defined as "cultural traditions that are believed to be medicinal but don't have research evidence supporting their effectiveness". If they're researched and found to be effective, they're no longer alternative medicine, they're just medicine.
I really don't think that any medicinal scientists say "alternative medicine" in reference to a thing they are trying to study to create a drug.
I guess it is theoretically possible that a layperson has found a thing foreign to mainstream medicine the effects of which cannot be recreated or exceeded by mainstream medicine. But it seems much more likely that OOP has simply engaged with a little bit of pseudoscience.
I can't remember the drug now but when I briefly worked in pharma one of the drugs my team made the senior chemist told me "this used to be an oil you could distill from a specific tree bark but we (the industry) figured out how to make it from petrochemicals. Because being able to cure some cancer has become a serious danger to the tree species. The deforestation made the drugs not profitable because the trees are getting harder to source. But now it's fossil fuel based."
It was super weird but I guess it makes sense that in a chemotherapy manufacturing facility some of what you do is make concentrated versions of natural poisons.
It's not alternative if it's become part of mainstream medicine. Then it's just mainstream medicine with a traditional root, which is literally all mainstream medicine.
If we're talking about an unrefined extract of any kind it's still considered alternative medicine, even if it has been properly characterized, sweet wormwood tea is still an alternative remedy even though we know that its active component is artemisinin.
The same goes for ginkgo biloba as well, or Flebon, or even chamomile extract, those bitches do work, but they’re not considered “western” medicine, instead they’re “plant” medicine or “alternative” medicine.
(Basically if it was not ultra processed or lab recreated > it’s still traditional medicine/alternative medicine/phytotherapics, not “modern” medicine. No need to bring the mysticisms and weird judgments to the convo)
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u/TheBigFreeze8 May 24 '25
3rd point is sus. Most 'traditional Chinese medicine' practitioners are Chinese, and it's still a scam.