The Salem Effect: Part 1 - How the Pharmaceutical Industry Inadvertently Promotes Modern-Day Witch Hunts

The Salem witch trials occurred during a period of intense superstition and fear in colonial Massachusetts. This was largely due to the influence of a rather radical sect of the Christian religion known as the Puritans. As a result, the town’s people began to conduct witch hunts, which led to unjust prosecutions and executions. Today, many see these affairs as a warning about the dangers of religious extremism, and the perils of blending church and state. However, I would like to share another point of view on the matter, as my own research has led me to see that the superstition and fear that enveloped Salem had not completely vanished, but transitioned.

Today, the extremism emanates from the secular rather than the religious. It rears its head when individuals side-eye herbal remedies and natural cures while blindly accepting pharmaceutical drugs with countless synthetic ingredients and side effects. Such individuals deify their doctors, yet burn herbalists and natural healers at the proverbial stake. They fuel the fire with demands for clinical trials, studies, and expert approval. Now, this does not suggest that a person should choose one side over the other. No! This is a call to put these things into their proper place in order to achieve health and wellness homeostasis. 

Health and wellness homeostasis begins with understanding that there is no such thing as good or bad–right or wrong. This sort of black and white thinking is primitive and immature. It gave way to the witch hunts of old, and those of today. Everything in existence has a purpose, and when that purpose is fulfilled it will cease to exist. Doctors, and the pharmaceutical drugs they administer, are meant for emergencies, such as strokes, heart attacks, broken bones, and things of that nature. But, to apply emergency methods to everyday health and wellbeing is like using a sledge hammer to kill an ant. Sure, it may render some success, but at what costs? Financial ruin? Medical malpractice? Untimely death? Sure, herbal remedies and natural cures are not entirely infallible, but the threshold for error is much higher because the body can adapt to organic ingredients more seamlessly.

All in all, herbal remedies and natural cures are not alternative medicines, but the bedrock of all medicines. Moreover, choosing such methods as a primary source of healthcare is only peculiar in a world that is at odds with nature. It is imperative to understand that these natural solutions follow the tenets of the earth. Like seeds that need time to sprout, and water that needs time and persistence to sculpt mountains and pathways, herbal remedies and natural cures require time, tests, and trial and error. This pales in comparison to the expedience of pharmaceutical drugs, but the end-result is a fortified body and mind. Just as mothers are the first teachers of children, Mother Nature is the first teacher of mankind. Being a faithful student of hers can lead to physical independence well into a person’s twilight years. But, those who forgo such lessons in order to make manmade medicines their primary source of healthcare are liable to become slaves, as the medical industry incrementally erodes their bodily autonomy for the sake profits and experimentation. Once again, pharmaceutical drugs are not inherently bad, or wrong, but simply unnecessary when it comes to everyday health and wellbeing.