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| a colossal love affair with pharmaceutical therapy. Plants were used only to find the magic "active constituent" whose physiological activities could be proven by double-blind lab tests. Then that constituent could be synthesized in a laboratory, packaged into a pill, injection or liquid and promoted to physicians who were seeking quick-acting drugs to relieve symptoms. Knowledge of plant medicine faded into the blur of human history. |
| Women were no longer respected as natural healers as earth-based religions honoring nature and her power were replaced with patriarchal religions and plant-based healing was replaced with the worship of the scientific method. While the majority of individuals seeking healthcare continued to be women, often seeking help with problems having to do with reproductive health, the majority of physicians were male. Herbal remedies used for "women's problems" were denigrated as "old wives' tales," and became even further buried in the past. |
| This negativity lasted until late in this century. Today alternatives to the pharmaceutical approach are sought by at least a third of the U.S. population and there is renewed interest in herbal preparations for healing and preventing illness. Alternative medical schools train a corps of students that is approximately 66 percent female, and the role of women in health care has once again become very important. Every day the use of herbal therapies gains more and more respect. |
| Herbal preparations generally present few if any side effects. Many of the herbal combinations prescribed offer tonifying or balancing effects in the body. The underlying principle in the use of herbal remedies is that the body is already trying to heal |
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