To be fair, not ALL alternative medicine is a load of codshit like homeopathy, laying on of hands, etc. etc.
Herbal medicine has enough devotees around the world, and plenty remedies do indeed work. I make a fair bit of use of various healing herbs and fungi myself, belladonna tincture or powdered leaf, used in very, very small, measured doses works well for sickness and nausea, as do its other nightshade relatives in many cases, such as the daturas, brugmansias (tree datura), henbane, mandrake (although the last can also be an emetic, and all are quite poisonous if wrongly or incautiously used. And also forms an antidote to certain poisonous mushrooms, notably those where the toxin is muscarine, a cholinergic agonist causing sweating, nausea, muscle twitches and severe GI unpleasantness, or in certain cases, a few species can be lethal, although either compound can be used to treat poisoning by the other, as the two work in direct opposition at the same targets in vivo)
Celandine (greater, Chelidonium majus, not lesser; which is unrelated and a member of the buttercup family) possesses extremely irritant, corrosive yellow sap (both varieties are irritant, and neither should ever be used internally) can be employed to burn off growths.
Comfrey root, is another that has stood the test of time, scraped to a pulp and applied as a compress to aching, arthritic, or wounded joints, broken bones, sprains, etc., safe for this use, never for internal use due to hepatotoxic pyrrolizidine alkaloids. Helps with my shitty joints at least.
Opium, Nigella seed both work against pain of course, and the former induces sleep, both work to counter GI upsets although opium is a much stronger, more certain, although less safe remedy for those unfamiliar with its use, and the latter whilst not a true opioid, seems able to be used in the remediation of the withdrawal sickness attending cessation of longterm use of opiates, I think the active may be an enkephalinase inhibitor, and its also seemingly active at least in vitro against some cancer cell lines.
Although serious problems, like cancer should be treated conventionally, with herbal remedies only used as a backup. There are many, many problems that can be safely, and sucessfully dealt with using herbs one either grows, or for species that grow in one's locale, and are not too scarce in the wild, harvested from nature.
