From kammerer@cwis.unomaha.edu Fri Apr 9 17:41:44 1993 From: kammerer@cwis.unomaha.edu (Al Kammerer) Subject: Re: Opium Poppies Date: Mon, 5 Apr 1993 03:05:55 GMT I was reading an English garden book from 1903 which spoke of growing opium poppies each year from the spill of seed from previous years. The nurseries called them peony-flowered poppies, the garden book said. Sure enough, the peony flowered poppies listed in a local seed outlet were Papaver somniferum. The garden book's author said of the issue of politically correct name for this narcotic little bloomer: "Such duplicity." With government control of drugs widening in the Clinton era, (pharmaceutical companies have been declared as greedy as the illegal such companies by Clinton), people may need to have such information. Since the comstock act prevents people from disseminating any information on abortifacient and emmagogueic plants, this information is not widely know either. Some women may use these plants to regulate their menstrual cycles, for far, far less than any drugs prescribed in our pricy health system. I agree that such discussions are inappropriate (I hate that word though) in this forum, but gardening has always held a medicinal subplot and there is a certain wild charm from growing such strange and powerful plants, and lessons, rather than drugs, to be extracted from their little green mouths. I have neither the chronic world weariness, nor sickness unto death that would require me to entrance myself with the sorceries possible with any of these plants, but I have to think we need to have the freedom to talk about such strange, surreal sorceries. Article 2212 of misc.health.alternative: Newsgroups: misc.health.alternative From: rdnelson@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Roger D. Nelson) Subject: Re: Open and free discussion of the medicinal properties of plants (fwd.) Message-ID: <1993Apr12.005324.14942@Princeton.EDU> Originator: news@nimaster Sender: news@Princeton.EDU (USENET News System) Nntp-Posting-Host: phoenix.princeton.edu Organization: Princeton University References: <1993Apr9.214510.6324@samba.oit.unc.edu> <1993Apr10.111029.23741@Princeton.EDU> <1qa13gINNjs8@duca.hi.com> Date: Mon, 12 Apr 1993 00:53:24 GMT Lines: 48 In article <1qa13gINNjs8@duca.hi.com> wright@duca.hi.com (David Wright) writes: >In article <1993Apr10.111029.23741@Princeton.EDU> rdnelson@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Roger D. Nelson) writes: > [snip] >>goes into a partially disfunctional state, applying a single, simple, >>often overpowering pressure on it via a modern pharmaceutical may be far >>less useful than an administering an empirically discovered complex of >>natural plant products. > >On what basis do you make this remarkable statement? If my car is >going into a dysfunctional state because the oil drain plug fell out, >the solution is to replace the plug and put more oil in, not >administer a variety of "natural plant products." If you know the plug fell out, by all means replace it. But if your immune system is letting you down, I suggest you may have a bit more complex problem on your hands. Obviously the basis for my "remarkable" statement is a view incompatible with the belief that we know enough about the intricacies of homeostatic organic systems to shape them to our (simple-minded) will. Simply put, the magnificent achievements of modern science and western medicine remain more than a little short of full understanding. Thus, while an antibiotic is a wonderful thing, it is nothing more than a highly divided bludgeon for hammering away at simple creatures that are foreign invader parasites, that is that are not part of the structure and hence can simply be poisoned. The same approach to cancer (and our western procedures are essentially that) does not work so well, because in this case, the invader is not so foreign. The primary treatments researched in the magic bullet mode tend to be therefore akin to burning the house to rid it of rats. I have no problem with supporting this direction if it is not to the exclusion of other approaches, including stuff mentioned in earlier post. A nice article by Arielle Emmett discusses evidence that Chinese herbal methods can help furbish the immune system, and the fact that the US medical research community actively ignores it, and some of the reasons why. In Technology Review, Dec. 92, V 95, #8, pgs 50-56. > [snip] >Intelligent, perhaps, but "probably far wiser" is unsupportable. I am >irresistably reminded of Will Cuppy: "The [ancient] Egyptians believed >that the sun went around the earth on a boat, and that a pig ate the >moon every 28 days." A footnote adds: "This was called the wisdom of >the ancients." > Right. Try for something applicable -- say the ostrich story. Roger