Book Report

I've recently started reading a book about medicine hunting, it tells the story well and it's offered great insight into the world of herbal healing. There are a few key things from that I think would like to mention.

The author mentions that in America you'll find most herbal medicine in capsule form. This works, but he prefers raw herbs because you can prepare them in the method of your choosing. This includes putting them into a smoothie. In many ways western medicine is superior, but when it comes to delivery method herbalism wins. I think the medical community would find patients a lot more receptive if they started issuing things in smoothies.

A huge number of third world ailments can be solved by cleaning the wound, keeping good hygiene, and not picking at it. I think we should add these lessons to the condom use and vaccination programs we're already running.

According to the book the number one cause of accidental death in the amazon is snake bite. I don't think that's an accident. I think that's you got killed by a snake. Certainly from the snakes point of view it wasn't an accident.