WHAT'S IN A PILL?
Rex Burress
When I see a cedar waxwing or a robin pluck a pyracantha berry and swallow it, I think of people swallowing some kind of pill.
The difference is the bird knows what's in the berry, while human pill swallowers often don't know what's inside a manufactured pill. Or how it was made. It is a matter of trust in taking what the doctor prescribes, or believing the print on a bottle of vitamins or other kind of pills. The mark of mankind is living by trust and belief in products made in some unknown location by some unknown person. Often synthesized ingredients are compressed into pills without the worker knowing how chemists created a concoction that is generally believed to help relieve disease.
However, there is always the possibility of an error being made, or a fiend with a fiendish mind deliberately messing with the formula to make people sick, as was done with Tylenol one time. Lives are imperiled every step of the way in life, often because of innocent error or accident. Know this: To err is human; to forgive divine. Forgiving when you're dead is debatable.
Most medicines, synthesized or natural, are obtained from plants, and make no mistake, some plants heal and some plants are poisonous. Getting the right stuff into the pill is critical. If a sprig of poison hemlock got mixed up with St. John's Wort, it could be disastrous.
Some of the first pills were found on a Roman ship wrecked in 140 B.C. Through DNA methods, it was discovered that the round concoctions were vegetable pills, consisting of carrot, radish, parsley, celery, onion, cabbage, alfalfa, yarrow and hibiscus powder! Even at that time foods were being condensed. But how can such small amounts of vegetables do any good? “Good for the seller!”
In 500 B.C., at the Mediterranean Isle of Lemnos, a red clay was discovered that allegedly promoted divine healing. Of course, there were enterprising individuals who gathered the clay and rolled it into globs of honey and myrrh, and undoubtedly profited on “a fountain of youth” pill. The pills were highly sought through the 19th Century! Research shows that the red clay consisted of absorbent iron, silica, chalk, and magnesium. Did it produce miracles?
If you have had any thing to do with the medical profession, or the supplement providers, I'm sure you've got a goodly collection of pill bottles containing 'this pill to get the benefit of that pill.' The pill application can get out of hand in the senior age when there is a tendency to have more aches and pains.
As one of those with imperfections,I have some of that-- pain--and my doctor prescribed 'Tramadol,' better for me than Ibuprofen he said. The list of possible side effects was extensive. I took a few that was unsatisfactory, so I am left with a bunch of pills that can't be returned, and pose a discard problem. Bottom line; pills are expensive; relief is minimal; addiction is possible. It's a pill game, folks, equal big bucks and disillusioned relief seekers.
Underlying all this pill business is the vegetative kingdom that not only creates formulas for medical advancement, provider of our nutrition, but also a source of deadly poisons. How these multiple characteristics originated is a mystery we are still studying, especially the role of plant and animal organisms interacting with each other. The medicine that cures can become the poison that kills.
“The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don't want, drink what you don't like, and do what you'd rather not.” --Mark Twain
“Never under any circumstance take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night.”--Dave Barry
“A good pill can be a good friend: As I love nature, as I love singing birds, and gleaming stubble, and flowing rivers, and morning and evening, and summer and winter, I love thee, my friend.”
--Henry David Thoreau