Dear Jim:
I read ‘The Gray Nineties‘ [an early draft edition of the novel “Patriots”] back when it was shareware, and did some gun accessory business with you back then. [In the early to mid-1990s.] I finally got around to perusing SurvivalBlog.
One of the old posts includes a plea for ‘hard data’ on effectiveness of herbal medicines. My wife used to work for a ‘neutriceuticals’ company, doing literature reviews, and as an M.D. I have some exposure to the literature as well (though not as much as I should — I keep wasting time reading things that might have an effect on reducing my need for my own services). What I have observed is that there is not much out there in the way of good research on herbal preparations. What little there is shows mostly negative or equivocal results (which makes it hard to get published). What little halfway decent research my wife found back in the late 1990s was mostly out of Germany, but most of it was pretty disappointing.
I guess the bottom line is that under austere conditions (WTSHTF), it doesn’t look like mother nature is going to provide us with the equivalent of our modern pharmacy. In a long term collapse, preventative medicine, simple surgery, orthopedics, midwifery/obstetrics will be left. Life spans will be shorter. You won’t be able to prolong your death by a month with a $250,000 ICU stay if the technology isn’t there. – Simple Country Doctor