By: Doug Smith
Home Remedies - Facts or Quacks?
Myths and legends often have their basis in a grain of truth. So I wondered if home remedies, alternative treatments, and folklore cures might also be based on truth. First, let's try to define the phrase home remedy.
There's No Place Like Home.
The name itself proclaims that a home remedy is, well, a remedy that's administered at home! Prescription drugs are often given at home as remedies, so we need to dig a little deeper. When you think of home remedy, don't you think of some sort of cure or treatment that's outside mainstream modern medicine? Me too. Let's take a look at some choices.
The Holistic View.
The dictionary defined holistic medicine as an approach to medical care that emphasizes the study of all aspects of a person's health, including physical, psychological, social, economic, and cultural factors. The holistic definition is very broad and could apply to many medical approaches.
Peaches & Herbs?
Many people associate herbs with home remedies. The definition for herbal remedy is a plant, or plant part, or an extract or mixture of these used to prevent, alleviate, or cure disease called also herbal medicine. That sounds like a good definition, although home remedies tend to encompass more than herbal remedies. What's next?
Folk Medicine.
Folk medicine is defined as traditional medicine especially as practiced by people isolated from modern medical services, and usually involving the use of plant-derived remedies on an empirical basis. Now we're getting somewhere! The old-timers practiced medicine not based entirely on plants when modern medicine wasn't available. Let's dig a little deeper into the dictionary.
Home At Last.
Finally we find the dictionary's definition of home remedy: a simply prepared medication or tonic often of unproven effectiveness administered without prescription or pro- fessional supervision. So - it is a remedy prepared outside the realm of modern medicine, it's not limited to herbs, but unproven effectiveness? I disagree. I can prove that some of the simplest home remedies have led to some of our greatest medical breakthroughs (but that's another article).
Is That Your Final Answer?
Based on the research above, let's agree to define a home remedy as follows:
An experienced-based or even accidental remedy or cure prepared by common folk from herbs, plants, or other available ingredients when modern medical help was unavailable (or hadn't been devised yet).
That's my answer, and I'm sticking to it!
