Foundations and Fault Lines: Reclaiming Natural Healing in the Age of Allopathy

On today’s episode, we’re stepping into a long-forgotten crossroads in history.

We’ll trace the roots of Western allopathic medicine—and what it replaced. We’ll meet healers whose names rarely make the textbooks, learn their protocols, and explore how philanthro-capitalism—led by some of the wealthiest families in history—shifted healthcare from soulful healing into a system built on symptom management.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
Welcome back to the Chasing Eden podcast. I'm your host,
Carolyn Thompson, and on today's episode, we're stepping into a
long forgotten crossroads in history. We'll trace the roots of
Western allopathic medicine and what it replaced. We'll meet healers
whose names rarely make the textbooks, learn their protocols, and

(00:32):
explore how philanthro capitalism, led by some of the wealthiest
families in history, shifted healthcare from soulful healing into a
system built on symptom management. We'll hear about medicine that
grew wild along riverbanks, stored in jars on kitchen shelves,

(00:53):
passed hand to hand between generations. We'll also talk about
how after COVID more people are breaking away from the
sterile confines of a one size fits all healthcare system
to reclaim their health naturally. Today is not just history.
It's an invitation to remember to remember the plants, the people,

(01:19):
and the principles that kept humanity alive long before the
white coats and patent numbers. So let's begin this journey
from the clinics of tomorrow back to the wisdom of yesterday.
Picture this an Appalachian granny woman in the late eighteen hundreds.

(01:43):
Bent over a weathered wooden table outside a storm lashes
the mountains. Inside, she grinds dried echanaesia roots with a paesel,
adding just enough water to form a dark, pungent paste.
She's making a poultice for a neighbor's infected wound, a

(02:06):
neighbor too poor and too far to see a town doctor.
Long before the term big pharma ever existed, healing in
America lived in kitchens, fields, and shared oral traditions. Native
American tribes were stewards of an astonishing pharmacopeia golden seal

(02:29):
for infections, blue cohash for women's health, Cascara segrata for
digestive cleansing, and willow bark for pain. These weren't just remedies.
They were part of a world view where nature was
a living pharmacy, one to be respected and preserved. The

(02:52):
Shawnee new Echinasia's power to rally the body's defenses. The
Lakota used it for snake bites. Later settlers learned from them,
applying it for sore throats, fevers, and wound healing. During
the Revolutionary War, when formal medicine was scarce. Soldiers carried
small bundles of herbs kamamil to calm the stomach, yarrow

(03:17):
to staunch bleeding, sage for colds and mouth infections. These
were light weight, reliable, and didn't require a chemist lab.
By the early nineteenth century, Samuel Thompson's Thomas' Sononiism thoms
so Noniism was challenging the establishment. Thompson rejected the blood

(03:40):
letting calamel, which is mercury and opium heavy medicine of
his day. He believed illness came from a loss of
internal heat and prescribed cayenne pepper to restore it, lobelia
to open the lungs, steam baths to sweat out toxins.
His systems spread like wildfire among rural Americans who distrusted

(04:05):
city doctors. Now, isn't that interesting that, even early on
that people out further out in the rural areas distrusted
city doctors. It's like we've come full circle and people
are starting to distrust doctors again. At the same time,

(04:26):
Samuel Hahnemann in Europe was shaping homeopathy, a discipline rooted
in something called similia simulbus grintor or like cures. Like
using highly diluted natural substances, Homeopaths sought to stimulate the
body's healing mechanisms. By the late eighteen hundreds, America had

(04:51):
dozens of homeopathic colleges and thousands of practitioners, many boasting
superior survival rates during epidemics compared to allopathic counterparts. Even
further back, the father of medicine, Hippocrates, taught that food
should be thy medicine and medicine thy food. This echoed

(05:15):
centuries later in the work of Western A Price, a
dentist who traveled the globe in the nineteen thirties documenting
the connection between traditional diets and robust health. His photographs
of vibrant, cavity free indigenous peoples stood in stark contrast

(05:36):
to the dental decay and chronic illness of westernized populations.
And then there's doctor Max Gerson, a German born physician
whose nutritional therapy for cancer relied on raw juices, coffee, enemas,
and salt free plant based diets to detoxify and rebuild

(05:58):
the body. Patients told stories of reversal and recovery, but
Gerson's methods threatened a system built on patented drugs, and
his work faced censorship and fierce opposition. These natural healers
all shared something in common, a view of health as
harmony between body, mind and environment, not as a battle

(06:22):
to be waged with chemical warfare. In nineteen ten, everything changed.
The Flexner Report, funded by Rockefeller and Carnegie Philanthropy, swept
through America like a cold wind, shutting down hundreds of
medical schools, especially those teaching botanical medicine, homeopathy, and eclectic healing.

(06:46):
Only institutions willing to adopt a laboratory driven, pharmaceutical friendly
curriculum survived. The Rockefeller Foundation funneled millions into these new
scientific schools, which emphasized chemistry, surgery, and drug research over
plant based therapies. Critics have long argued this was less

(07:10):
about improving medicine and more about consolidating control. The alleged
involvement of global banking dynasties, including the Rothschilds, is a
matter of historical debate, but what's clear is that industrial
medicine and pharmaceutical manufacturing expanded rapidly in the decades that followed.

(07:33):
From this point forward, the definition of doctor narrowed A
century old Appalachian midwife who delivered hundreds of babies safely
might suddenly find herself branded as unlicensed. An herbalist who
kept an entire village healthy might be fined or arrested

(07:54):
for practicing medicine without a license. And then there were
there researchers who didn't fit the mold. Doctor Gerson's cancer therapy,
doctor Royal Lee's nutritional supplements designed to support organ function,
even Harry Hawxy's herbal cancel formulas all met the same fate, suppression,

(08:18):
ridicule or outright bands. The system that emerged wasn't simply
about healing the sick. It was about creating a streamlined,
scalable model that aligned perfectly with pharmaceutical manufacturing and hospital expansion.

(08:39):
Chronic disease in this model became not a tragedy to prevent,
but a market to serve indefinitely. Fast forward to today,
and the pendulum is swinging again. Herbalist ya Ya Vallis
teaches her community to reconnect with the plants under their feet.

(09:02):
She blends motherwart for calming the heart, lemon balm for
easing tension, camomial for gentle digestion, all part of a
philosophy that healing is not an act of corporate charity,
but of personal sovereignty. In India, Iyerovitic practitioners still match

(09:23):
herbs to a person's constitution and the season, triphala for digestion,
turmeric for inflammation, oshwaganda for strength, and in kitchens across America,
young families are returning to remedies like elderberry syrup, bone broth,

(09:45):
and herbal tease, not as novelties, but as first lines
of defense. Science now confirms that about a quarter of
all prescription drugs originate from plants, but when those compounds
are isolated, altered, and patented, they often lose the synergistic,

(10:05):
balanced nature intended. The whole plant nourishes, the pill manages symptoms.
COVID cracked the facade. For many, it was the first
time they questioned whether public health guidance was immune from
corporate influence. Some found themselves turning back to the same
remedies they are great grandparents used, like ginger tea, vitamin C, sunlight,

(10:30):
and movement. This wasn't an abandonment of science. It was
a reclamation of choice, a belief that the body is
not simply a machine to be fixed in the shop,
but a garden to be cultivated. Today, we've walked with
healers from ancient Greece to modern Appalachia, from tribal rblis

(10:53):
to maverick doctors, from a medicine of the people to
a medicine or of the corporations. Neither path is perfect alone,
But when the rigor of science joins hands with the
wisdom of the soil, we move closer to true health.
If this conversation has stirred something in you, please subscribe

(11:16):
to the Chasing Eden podcast and visit our website at
Chasingeden dot net. Thank you for joining me.