Home Remedies – Facts or Quacks?
Myths and legends are often based on a grain of truth. So I was wondering if home remedies, alternative treatments, and folk cures could also be based on the truth. First, let’s try to define the phrase home remedy.
There is no place like home
The very name proclaims that a home remedy is, well, a remedy that is administered at home! Prescription drugs are often administered at home as remedies, so we need to dig a little deeper. When you think of home remedies, don’t you think of some kind of cure or treatment that is outside of conventional modern medicine? Me too. Let’s take a look at some options.
The holistic vision
The dictionary defines holistic medicine as an approach to health 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 and herbs?
Many people associate herbs with home remedies. The definition of herbal remedy is a plant, or part of a plant, or an extract or mixture thereof, used to prevent, alleviate or cure disease, also called herbal medicine. That sounds like a good definition, although home remedies tend to encompass more than herbal remedies. Whats Next?
folk medicine
Folk medicine is defined as traditional medicine, especially when practiced by individuals in isolation from modern medical services, and usually involves the use of plant-derived remedies on an empirical basis. Now we are getting somewhere! The ancients practiced non-plant based medicine when modern medicine was not available. Let’s dig a little deeper into the dictionary.
Finally at home
Finally we find the dictionary definition of home remedy: a simply prepared medicine or tonic, often of unproven efficacy, administered without a prescription or professional supervision. So, is it a remedy prepared outside the realm of modern medicine, not limited to herbs, but unproven efficacy? I disagree. I can show that some of the simplest home remedies have led to some of our greatest medical breakthroughs (but that’s another article).
Is that your last answer?
Based on the above research, let us agree to define a home remedy as follows:
An experience-based or even accidental remedy or cure prepared by common people from herbs, plants, or other ingredients available when modern medical help was not available (or had not yet been used).
That’s my answer, and I stand by it!
