Discussion»Questions»Random Knowledge» How would you think North American natives discovered that boiling the bark of a willow tree could make a tea that can relieve pain?
Because any of those Indians could have been an experimenter and came across White willow "the wonder drug" as a last ditch desperate attempt to relieve pain probably having found out that other plants helped various miscellaneous ailments of pain. IDK, but, Indians were one with nature also.
This post was edited by Benedict Arnold at December 6, 2018 11:39 PM MST
I find it interesting that many things were discovered by ancient men and women by accident. My favorite is bronze. Who thought of putting copper and tin together to create it?
Well, you see, people used to eat anything that grew out of the ground. Some things were unpleasant, so they didn't eat those again. Some people died after eating a plant, so the others didn't eat that one any more.
The reason you should respect your elders is because they know things that take more than one life time to learn.
Probably the same way I discovered Bush Oysters (fungus) are horrible. Once a small piece of fungus fell into my campfire coffee - I took the fungus out and tried to drink the coffee but it tasted awful and made me feel oggie all day so I learned something. Right now I'm watching a documentary about Sasquatch so I'm thinking that maybe they learned about bark tea from Sasquatch - there is nothing about that in the document though. Cheers!
I often think about what would have made earlier peoples try the remedies that we know that used. Just like this question. I always come up with accident. Perhaps they boiled plants simply for tasty food and realized certain combinations had good medicinal results.
Yes I wonder what would make them try inhaling the smoke of different plant species and discover the effects of nicotine and marijuana. Maybe i could try smoking different kinds of substances and discover something new.
Yeah, well, what do I know? The only natives I ever knew were descended from a tribe that allied with another tribe to make war on a third tribe. The second tribe didn't show up and all the men were killed. So by the time I came along, the entire tribe was descended from the 4F specimens who didn't go to war, and they were too stupid to boil water.
Thriftymaid 