12/24/2025
🌱Because herbs didn’t fail. They got sidelined.🌱
Herbal medicine didn’t disappear because it “stopped working” or because science bravely rode in on a white lab coat. It was pushed out on purpose.
Those of us who actually use herbs and see them work daily sometimes feel like we’re taking crazy pills when people dismiss them as woo, snake oil, or Instagram fads. Especially when most of the world still relies on plants as primary medicine. That disconnect didn’t happen by accident.
Western medicine likes to tell a neat story. Cavemen chewed leaves. Then we evolved into pills, procedures, and patents. Progress. End of story.
Except that’s not how it went.
Herbal medicine wasn’t some primitive stepping stone we outgrew. It was a fully functioning system of care that worked well enough to threaten profits.
In the early 1900s, the U.S. medical landscape was deliberately reshaped. Medical schools that taught herbalism, midwifery, and other holistic approaches were systematically defunded and shut down. Schools that focused on patented pharmaceuticals and surgery were backed and legitimized. The American Medical Association played a huge role in this shift, and the blueprint is laid out plainly in the Flexner Report.
This wasn’t about patient outcomes. It was about standardization, control, and money. You can’t patent a plant that grows in your backyard. You can patent a synthesized compound, trademark it, and sell it forever.
The campaign worked brilliantly. Not only were herbal schools closed, but cultural memory was rewritten. Herbs went from respected medicine to “alternative.” Folk knowledge became “unscientific.” And anything that didn’t come in a prescription bottle was framed as suspicious.
But here’s the part that always makes me laugh.
None of that stopped the herbs from doing what they’ve always done.
Calendula didn’t stop healing skin. Ginger didn’t stop helping digestion. Hawthorn didn’t forget how to support the heart. Plants didn’t get the memo about being obsolete.
Western medicine absolutely has its place. Trauma care, surgery, emergency interventions? Incredible. Life saving. No argument there.
But pretending that pharmaceuticals are the natural evolution of medicine while herbs are relics is just bad history.
Herbal medicine wasn’t disproven. It was outspent, out-lobbied, and pushed to the margins. And somehow, despite all of that, it’s still here. Still working. Still helping people every single day.
That’s not a fad. That’s resilience.