Our point of view is that after plants became part of our world, animals started to exist with a builtin dependence on the flora of their domain. As plants grow they are able to assimilate and create life from the earth’ s mineral and chemical substance. From this new, alive creation all living patterns are extended. Therefore, by instinct, or experience, man in all parts of the globe soon distinguished plant life as daily food for man and animal; specifics for medicine; poisonous plants for man and animal, but the same is not always fatal to every specimen.
From time to time we read about new discoveries of what we call forgotten truth. National convention participants often speak about a herb as if it were just discovered for the first time. The written pages of Folk Medicine are yellow and torn with age and use. Social, professional and commercial opinions of the notorious poison oak. marihuana, and jimson weed are an accepted fact. Too few of us credit the residing properties of corrective herbs as being just as effective but in beneficial qualities.
Modern medicine has many good credits, but in medical literature alarming warnings of caution are also given. For the past twenty years actually no new ideas or discoveries are signified in medical science. Yes, there are many spectacular technical demonstrations and improvements, but not valued as a new idea, discovery or approach.
In many fields of our suffering, modern medicine has exhausted all possible chemical approach. We have to admit that many sicknesses by science and law are declared incurable, and the patient is treated to relieve the symptoms, but the condition is still in progress. Every day there is a new-name discovery for sickness; 30,000 was an estimate of disease names a few years ago. It would take a daily world census to keep up with this, and inevitably more sickness lead to a longer list of incurables followed by more and more new medication, which seems to accumulate; and so we have encouraged more and deeper problems.
It doesn’ t take too long to find that after testing more than 3,000 rats, the medicine is approved and declared safe for women’ s treatment. But in a short time a terrible and fatal side-effect is announced after treating many with prolonged use of the new miracle medicine. What was safe for 3,000 rats is fatal to women. Which brings us to another twentieth-century discovery. There is finally some difference between women and rats.
Today we can chemically produce sea water which absolutely has the same formula composition according to taste, smell, feel, etc., as sea water, but no sea life can live in this water. When the smallest part of natural sea water is added all life is encouraged immediately. The rational starting point of the medical world discovery is basically empirism of Folk Medicine. Today the total plant estimate is over 1,500,000, of which approximately 300,000 are classified as new plants. As about progress in our field, in the early fifties about 8,000 medical botanics were estimated, with new classifications approaching over 15,000 in the late sixties.
HERBALOGY ABROAD
Herbalogy abroad is the most dynamic and progressive. The Orient and Europe, especially Russia, has an army of scientists and practitioners preoccupied with world medical plants research. Whether pathology is from home or foreign soil the field of research holds unlimited opportunity to compare peoples’ practical accumulative knowledge concerning history of medical botanics around the world. Every plant has some property that research of our modern science can classify in this endless field of unknown plant purpose and acceptance.