Historical & Non-mainstream Medical Use
Laxatives, then called physicks or purgatives, were used extensively in pre-modern medicine to treat a wide range of conditions for which they are now generally regarded as ineffective in modern evidence-based medicine. Similarly, laxatives (often termed colon cleanses), continue to be promoted by practitioners of complimentary medicine for a range of conditions, including conditions which are not medically recognized, e.g. mucoid plaque.
Read more about this topic: Laxative
Famous quotes containing the words historical and/or medical:
“By contrast with history, evolution is an unconscious process. Another, and perhaps a better way of putting it would be to say that evolution is a natural process, history a human one.... Insofar as we treat man as a part of nature—for instance in a biological survey of evolution—we are precisely not treating him as a historical being. As a historically developing being, he is set over against nature, both as a knower and as a doer.”
—Owen Barfield (b. 1898)
“Homoeopathy is insignificant as an art of healing, but of great value as criticism on the hygeia or medical practice of the time.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)