What is a home remedy?

What is a home remedy?

Home remedies – facts or quacks?

Myths and legends often have their basis in a grain of truth. So I wondered if home remedies, alternative treatments and folk remedies could also be based on the truth. Let's first try to define the term home remedy.

There's no place like home

The name itself suggests that a home remedy is a home remedy administered at home! Prescription medications are often administered at home as remedies, so we have to dig a little deeper. When you think of home remedies, don't you think of some type of cure or treatment that lies outside of modern medicine? Me too. Let's take a look at some choices.

The holistic view

The dictionary defines holistic medicine as an approach to medical care that emphasizes the study of all aspects of a person's health, including physical, psychological, social, economic and cultural factors. The holistic definition is very broad and could apply to many medical approaches.

Peaches & herbs?

Many people associate herbs with home remedies. The definition of herbal remedy is a plant or part of a plant or an extract or a mixture thereof used to prevent, relieve or cure disease, also called herbal medicine. That sounds like a good definition, although home remedies usually encompass more than herbal remedies. What's next?

folk medicine

Folk medicine is defined as traditional medicine, especially when practiced by people isolated from modern medical services and usually using herbal remedies on an empirical basis. Now we're getting somewhere! The old-timers practiced medicine that was not entirely plant-based when modern medicine was unavailable. Let's delve a little deeper into the dictionary.

Finally at home

Finally we find the dictionary definition of home remedy: a simply prepared medicine or tonic, often of unproven effectiveness, administered without a prescription or professional supervision. So – it is a remedy created outside the realm of modern medicine, it is not limited to herbs but has unproven effectiveness? I disagree. I can prove that some of the simplest home remedies have led to some of our greatest medical breakthroughs (but that's another article).

Is that your final answer?

Based on the research above, let's agree to define a home remedy as follows:

An experiential or even accidental remedy or cure made by common people from herbs, plants, or other available ingredients when modern medical aid was not available (or had not yet been developed).

That's my answer and I'm sticking with it!