[id: series of photos of trees, moss, and other plant life growing over a sign, a ship, a Ferris wheel, a tank, a train, a car, a building, a fence, another ship, and a metal slide]
My favorite bit of folk medicine is that we’re supposed to take wormwood for intestinal parasites. It’s actually really effective, which is how wormwood got its name, but the reason it’s effective is that wormwood is literally just poison and it happens to kill the worms slightly faster than it kills you.
That’s medicine BABEYYYYYY!!!!
No, but seriously, the reason plants have useful chemicals that we can use medicinally is because they have evolved those chemicals as poisons to prevent predation. Humans were just smart enough to figure out through trial and error how to balance these chemical extracts to counteract abnormalities in our bodies.
Like: “Hm. This plant toxin is a cardiac glycoside and increases heart output. In a healthy person, this is highly unpleasant and may even cause death. But… for my aging aunt over here who’s suffering from congestive heart failure… a little foxglove extract taken every morning with her tea would probably help her circulation and keep her weary heart kickin’ for a few more years.”
Medicine is the opportune application of poisons. Healers and poisoners are folks with similar skill sets and wildly different philosophies.
That is medicine, baby. That’s how chemo works.
Poison that kills human cells but hits those that divide faster, harder. Hence why it kills out of control cancer cells but also fast growing hair cells. The trick is often “enough to kill the Bad without killing the rest”.
Animals do it too, e.g. parrots eating enough clay to absorb poisons without eating enough to absorb all the nutrients.
this is so magical, it looks like little plants begin to grow and thrive at the bottom
this is a very common thing for mosses!! they’ve made themselves so resistant to water loss that they can squeeze out all intercellular water in the dry season, hang out like that for months or however long it takes for water to come back to their environment, and then ‘wake up’ when they can replenish their cells and resume photosynthesis!! a fun thing to try is to dry out a moss and then drip water on it and watch it come back to life!!
