Alternative Medicine Articles

What Is A Home Remedy?

Home Remedies - Facts or Quacks?

Myths and legends often have their basis in a grain of truth. So I wondered if home remedies, alternative treatments, and folklore cures might also be based on truth. First, lets try to define the phrase home remedy.

Theres No Place Like Home

The name itself proclaims that a home remedy is, well, a remedy thats administered at home! Prescription drugs are often given at home as remedies, so we need to dig a little deeper. When you think of home remedy, dont you think of some sort of cure or treatment thats outside mainstream modern medicine? Me too. Lets take a look at some choices.

The Holistic View

The dictionary defined holistic medicine as an approach to medical care that emphasizes the study of all aspects of a person's health, including physical, psychological, social, economic, and cultural factors. The holistic definition is very broad and could apply to many medical approaches.

Peaches & Herbs?

Many people associate herbs with home remedies. The definition for herbal remedy is a plant, or plant part, or an extract or mixture of these used to prevent, alleviate, or cure disease called also herbal medicine. That sounds like a good definition, although home remedies tend to encompass more than herbal remedies. Whats next?

Folk Medicine

Folk medicine is defined as traditional medicine especially as practiced by people isolated from modern medical services, and usually involving the use of plant-derived remedies on an empirical basis. Now were getting somewhere! The old-timers practiced medicine not based entirely on plants when modern medicine wasnt available. Lets dig a little deeper into the dictionary.

Home At Last

Finally we find the dictionarys definition of home remedy: a simply prepared medication or tonic often of unproven effectiveness administered without prescription or professional supervision. So - it is a remedy prepared outside the realm of modern medicine, its not limited to herbs, but unproven effectiveness? I disagree. I can prove that some of the simplest home remedies have led to some of our greatest medical breakthroughs (but thats another article).

Is That Your Final Answer?

Based on the research above, lets agree to define a home remedy as follows:

An experienced-based or even accidental remedy or cure prepared by common folk from herbs, plants, or other available ingredients when modern medical help was unavailable (or hadnt been devised yet).

Thats my answer, and Im sticking to it!

Doug Smith is a Chemical Engineer and the webmaster of http://www.SuperHomeRemedies.com. You get free & natural remedies for fungus, lice, acid reflux, cold sores, yeast & more. Stay up to date with our Natural Remedies News

Copyright 2005 by Doug Smith. You may reuse this copyrighted article provided no content is changed - other than line length - and the authors box is intact. All links must be active hyperlinks or made active.

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