Many modern medical practices began as old wives' tales or folk remedies, and a multicultural variety of age-old remedies, often dismissed by twentieth-century Western medicine as harmful or foolish are now shown to have real scientific validity. An increasing number of pharmaceutical researches and scientists are recognizing the wealth of knowledge that can be retrieved from abandoned practices of earlier eras and from non-Western civilizations. This is a fascinating and witty exploration of the unexpected origins of contemporary medicine.
