Post #4144441

Replies (3)

• @Senal@programming.dev 2026-07-19 23:42

  I was also going to use aspirin as an example, there is also psychedelics as a treatment for various psychological ailments. I’m also going to post a response i made to a comment further up. I need to be more specific in how I mean “alternative” here. What I mean is “not of the current scientific consensus” , which I realise isn’t exactly the same wording as the wikipedia definition Thats my bad. I also failed to mention that it also works the other way as well, where current science is discredited(fully or partially) , due to flaws in it’s methodology, reproducibility or some other reason. In generalities i was thinking more of how certain branches or offshoots of what was considered to be mainstream ( or mainstream adjacent ) science were later found to be scientifically provable. An example of this is microbes. They were posited over the years in varied forms by multiple independent people, but they weren’t really fully accepted until the invention of a way of actually observing them. This is largely what medicine was prior to the current , formal scientific method. Local “medicine people” would have salves, cures, potions and other such concoctions passed down to apprentices, they might have some knowledge of how it works, but most of that knowledge would be in the practical application and treatment using said concoctions. That’s not to dismiss this practice, the years of experience and experimentation (of a kind) was, in some cases, essentially a precursor to modern scientific method. There are ways of analysing effects and positing theories without fully understanding how the underlying mechanism works. Sometimes that leads to legitimate data around the effects of a medicine or treatment being dismissed as “alternative”, at least until formal experimentation is done and verified As i said in another reply, I’m not saying it’s common, all i was saying was that it’s a possibility.

  Open ##4144440

• @CuddlyCassowary@lemmy.world 2026-07-19 20:12

  I think it depends how you frame this question. For example, aspirin originated from a compound in willow bark. Currently, most of us aren’t chewing on willow bark to relieve pain, but at some point that (or making willow bark teas, etc.) was the case. Whether you consider that as “alternative” depends on what point in history you ask that question. Leeches, which are still used today, also come to mind. Modern medicine has greatly refined how they’re used, but that’s not how it started. There are quite a few things that people noticed produced effects but didn’t understand the mechanism. Science changed that. However, if you consider using things with known properties in a wildly irresponsible manner as the definition of “alternative medicine,” that’s a very different question. Even when novel therapies from existing medicine do come to light at times, generally this is through scientific observation and testing, not Cletus taking horse medicine.

  Open ##4144675

• @nymnympseudonym@piefed.social 2026-07-19 20:05

  Usually herbs found by ethnographers. Aspirin, for example, IIRC discovered by a scientist investigating traditional therapeutics (tree bark)

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