What Religion, If Any, Were You Before You Became An Atheist?

[thesummerqueen]

There are a lot of medicinal herbs in England - comfrey, just to pick one, was widely used to bind wounds. Stinging nettle was used to stimulate arthritic joints. Many culinary plants were also purported to have certain medicinal properties (think of how many people today take garlic pills for extra health benefits). There was also a whole branch of herbcraft that developed where the cure for a particular disease or wound was supposed to be found in a plant that resembled the affliction (something like homeopathy). Of a surety, literature brought in from the Crusades or trading boosted legitimate knowledge.

It's a little unfair to say these people didn't have some sort of plant knowledge - even if later it was found to be falsely based. Too many things came from plants: flax made oil and linen, blue dye came from woad, onions flavored food and meadowsweet contains the same chemical that aspirin does today. They had to force food from the earth they worked. Truthfully, these people had in some ways a far more intimate knowledge than most of us do with plants and herbs. They were in way closer contact with them.

What we don't do nowadays is say a prayer over the medicines we're given - many of which contain compounds from plants. Instead we fall for the 'magic' of advertising and pretty packaging and take the same shit in 'organic' form.