Word: herbs
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...used to have one near-mystical defense against the ever-present pathogen fog: Echinacea. I still recall the first time that I encountered the magical herb. My prefect expounded on the palliative effects of Echinacea, and suggested taking three little green meanies any time we even thought that a little tickle might be forming at the back of our throat. At the time, being of sound mind and body, I scoffed at this quaint notion. Taking herbal supplements sounded more like witchcraft than modern medicine. If this stuff did anything, I reasoned, researchers would have found out about it, analyzed...
...investigating the magical herb, it seems I have likely destroyed its power. The ignorance that created the placebo-powered cold-busting green torpedo has given way to an understanding of sterile, uninspiring data. While it seems that in this case, ignorance may have been healthful bliss, I must believe that the loss of some small area of mystery under the boot of scientific progress, no matter how inconvenient now, can only be rewarded in the future...
...will not second-guess the value of any kind of knowledge. Soon the process of exploration that led to the death of my magical herb might lead to the death of the common cold itself. I await this day eagerly, with the more prosaic remedies of Dristan® and Nyquil® at my side...
DIED. ARTHUR CANTOR, 81, Broadway producer whose wife thought he was "nuts" for investing $2,000 in 1957 in a show called The Music Man and who championed the comic playwrights Paddy Chayefsky and Herb Gardner; in Manhattan. Cantor, a publicist before becoming a producer, hoisted signs for his marquees as humorous as the plays they pushed. One read, "'I laughed my head off'--Marie Antoinette...
...study, sponsored by Pfizer (maker of both the antidepressant heavyweight Zoloft and herbal supplements) and the National Institutes of Mental Health, included 200 patents who took either St. John's Wort or a placebo pill for eight weeks each. The patients who took the herb showed very little or no improvement in their depression - the same results as the patients taking the placebo...