@hlezama,

Fascinating. Of course, it makes sense. Eating anything unavoidably triggers a cascade of chemical reactions. While Western medicine often dismisses traditional medicine as voodoo, I don't. Some of the world's most potent biochemicals are simple plant extracts.

How people in the pre-modern era figured out that oregano could help with kidney stones though ... well, that's a mystery unto itself.

But they did. Today's most effective malarial drug is directly derived from ancient Chinese medical texts, including the procedure about how best to extract it from the plant (which contradicts modern methodologies which tends to ruin it). During the Vietnam War, the Chinese government made such drug a military secret. As a result, the Viet Cong had much more effective malarial treatments than did the Americans.

Quill