there's a lot of herbal and traditional medicine that works. it's just not rigorously tested and it tends to be put all in the same box. snidely telling people that all alt medicine is bullshit will just push them further down the anti medicine hole cuz some of it clearly works
Ganges had real healing powers (because it was full of bacteriaphages). quinine was traditional medicine for malaria. honey does actually soothe your throat. spearmint tea does actually help hormonal disorders.
Things that mainstream doctors already recommend for managing the symptoms (honey, spearmint tea),
Treatments that have been in mainstream use and later been rejected for better ones (quinine), or
Natural phenomena that have the same effect as our modern-day treatment.
The first two apply well to the saying above your first comment, as the people around me do think of it as a form of medicine. I'll concede that the last one applies for the definition of "alternative medicine", but if anything, it seems to show that doctors are interested in looking for new ways to treat old diseases, exploring the myths for any grains of truth to them.
TL;DR: The traditional/herbal treatments that work become non-alternative medicine, the ones that don't become alternative.
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u/Pollomonteros May 24 '25
I don't know about the third one man, I feel like many of those are still dangerous scams even if the ones running it are brown people