It's hard to be passionate about something that many refer to as "alternative", "hippy stuff", "quackery", etc. Honestly, the majority of the population doesn't take herbal medicine and holistic remedies seriously. It's hard to imagine that for thousands of years these methods were the only way. In my herbalism courses, the first class we took was a class on History. We learned about Hippocrates (the Father of Medicine) and his studies of the human body, followed by Dioscorides, Samuel Thompson, and more. Finally, we got to the point in history where herbalism lost its momentum and in stepped pharmaceuticals. We were taught that to understand folk medicine and modern medicine, you need to know the history of both.
The biggest change to come about in medicine was in the year 1909. Up until this year, most people were still being treated with a holistic approach. However, there was a man by the name of Rockefeller (ring a bell?) who was a huge oil tycoon at the time. He had a large interest in using his petroleum byproducts in pharmaceuticals. While there were a few doctors out there prescribing pharmaceuticals when deemed necessary, the majority still heavily relied on a more natural approach. It would appear that Rockefeller was trying to come up with a solution and fast. Once again, we can only assume but sometimes you just have to follow the money. John Rockefeller got together with Andrew Carnegie in an attempt to present a report to Congress. This report would hopefully convince Congress that changes needed to be made to the medical field. In 1910, the Rockefeller Foundation and Carnegie Foundation funded a report called the Flexner Report. The American Medical Association (the AMA) chose a man named Abraham Flexner to write up the report they'd present to Congress. This report had one goal in mind. It was to prove to Congress that medical education needed to be rebuilt and standardized. Abraham Flexner's findings were that there were too many doctors in America practicing unscientific medicine. The Flexner Report heavily suggested that ONLY the American Medical Association (remember, the association that chose the author of this report) could approve medical school licensure.
Of course, Congress did indeed agree with the Flexner Report. The result? To become a doctor, you had to go to a medical school that taught the new standard: allopathic medicine. Who funded these schools? These schools were funded by John Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie. Those schools then received additional grants if they kept with the new standard and only taught the new stringent guidelines. No longer were medical schools teaching about plant-based options and nutrition first. To add fuel to that fire, Rockefeller had a lot of control over the media. He was able to discredit natural medicine quite easily. Yes, the natural medicine even Hippocrates swore by. Although, they do still teach the famous Hippocratic Oath in medical schools.
Did Rockefeller benefit from this Flexner Report and the standardizing of medical schools? He did. Rockefeller owned the majority of oil in the United States. He now could use his petrochemicals to manufacture everything that his schools endorsed from antibiotics to cough syrups to topical creams.
Now, herbal and holistic medicine is not the only way. We also need to understand that modern medicine isn't the only way either. It is when we work together to find a balance of the two that holistic and allopathic medicine can be of optimal use.
And although medical schools now discredit many of the methods of Hippocrates, the Father of Medicine, let us remember he was an herbalist. I'll leave you with my favorite quotes by him:
“The greatest medicine of all is teaching people how not to need it”
"It is far more important to know what person the disease has than what disease the person has"
"Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food"
"Walking is a man's best medicine"