People these days see you as an oddball when you talk about the healing properties of plants or essential oils.
This is the story of the Rockefeller family who paved the way for Big Pharma by destroying natural remedies.
It all starts with John Rockefeller, who was an oil tycoon, America's first billionaire and a natural monopolist.
At the beginning of the 20th century, he controlled 90% of all oil refineries in the United States through his oil company, which at that time was called ''Standard Oil''.
In the same years, around 1900, scientists discovered “petrochemistry” and the ability to create all kinds of chemicals from petroleum. For example, the first plastic, called bakelite, was made from petroleum in 1907.
Rockefeller saw in it the ability to monopolize the oil, chemical and medical industries at the same time! The best thing about petrochemicals was that anything could be patented and sold at high profits.
But there was a problem with Rockefeller's plan for the medical industry: natural or herbal medicines were very popular in America at the time. Nearly half of American doctors and universities practiced holistic medicine, using the knowledge of Native Americans and Europeans.
Rockefeller, found a way to get rid of his biggest competition. He therefore used the classic “solution-problem-reaction” strategy. In other words, create a problem and scare people away, then come up with a (pre-planned) solution.
He went to see his friend Andrew Carnegie and together they sent a man named Abraham Flexner to travel to every hospital across the country and report on the state of medical schools.
This led to the Flexner Report (Abraham Flexner Report — Wikipedia (wikipedia.org) ) which gave birth to modern medicine as we know it.
This is when natural medicines were ridiculed and demonized; And doctors have even been imprisoned.
To help with the transition and change the minds of other doctors and scientists, Rockefeller awarded over $100 million to universities and hospitals and founded a philanthropic front group called the General Board of Education (GEB).
In a very short time, all medical faculties were modernized and homogenized. All students were taught the same thing, and medicine was about using proprietary drugs.
Scientists received huge grants to study how plants cure disease, but their goal was to first identify chemicals in the plant that were effective, then recreate a similar, but not identical, chemical in the lab. , which could be patented.
A pill for a sick person has become the mantra of modern medicine.
Therefore :
- Ginger has become gravol
- Wintergreen has become voltaren
- Willow bark turned into aspirin
- Slippery elm bark has become pepto-bismol etc.
A beautiful woman, Caroline Gagnon who is a golden herbalist often says this sentence: ''Herbalism is an ancestral right'' and she is indeed right. Plants have everything to help us, we just have to listen to them.
Don't get me wrong! I am not saying that ''modern'' medicine is not good! I fundamentally believe that it's all about balance.
To the pleasure!