Tree’s resin, called ’tsori’ in Biblical texts, was highly prized in ancient world for its used in perfume, incense, cataract medicine, embalming agents, and antidotes
The resin of a tree grown from an ancient seed found in a desert cave near Jerusalem could be the source of a medicinal balm mentioned in the Bible, a new study has found.
The strange seed, about 2cm long, was discovered in a Judean Desert cave in the late 1980s, and dated to between 993AD and 1202AD. After years of attempting to grow the plant, researchers have identified the sapling nicknamed “Sheba”.
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Researchers suspected the “Sheba” tree to be a candidate for the “Judean Balsam” or “Balm of Judea”, which was cultivated exclusively in the desert region of southern Levant during Biblical times.
The Judean Balsam has been extensively described in the literature from Hellenistic, Roman-Byzantine and Post-Classical periods between the 4th century BC and the 8th century AD.
Yes, historical medicin was so good, lets work our ass off to recreate it…
That’s how I feel every time someone touts “traditional Chinese medicine.” Sure, ancient peoples knew about certain cures… they also didn’t understand basic concepts like viruses.
What do you call alternative medicine that has been proven to work?
medicine
Exactly. My dad had and I have a painful nerve condition called trigeminal neuralgia. My dad was desperate to try anything, so he tried acupuncture. I asked him if it helped with the pain and he told me, “no, but the acupuncturist said it did.” And then I asked him what it felt like, and he said, “it felt like someone stuck a lot of needles in my face.”
Jumping in to ask if you’ve tried carbomazapine (sp?) for the TN? My mom suffered for nearly 2 years with face shocks, sometimes dozens of times per day. That med is the only thing that helped, and we never had a doctor suggest it. I did my own research by looking up medical journals on my school’s library and then asked the doc to prescribe it for her. Almost instant relief
Thanks, but mine is already handled via medication.
My dad has lingering (in fact, worsened now that he’s getting older) pain and contortions and his foot that was nearly severed when he was a teenager. He’s very much not into alternative medicine and that sort of thing, but he finally decided to try acupuncture about two years ago. He says it helped. Only thing that has helped.
I’m still skeptical, but I’m a little bit less skeptical because he’s the sort to be skeptical of it as well.
My laymans assumption is that acupuncture likely has a counterirritant effect, which can make pain seem less pronounced.
Sort of like how punching yourself in the side of the head can provide relief for a migraine.
I wonder if that might be the case. My dad said that it wasn’t painful, so I’m not sure. The needles are apparently very thin.
I would expect, just like with pharmaceutical medicine, there is a placebo effect for some people and so it gets really complicated trying to determine how effective something like acupuncture is.
For people who hate the greed of the pharma industry, it’s really amazing to see just how little logic it takes to destroy their arguments:
Many pharmaceuticals origate as natural remedies. You think they just came up with synthetic drugs out of thin air?
No, but the process to identify the ones that work is all part of the modern medicine. Before that, placebo and lack of scientific methods made it impossible to separate a working substance from snake oil.
It may have useful organic compounds. I’m mostly interested because it could be a nice incense