Many modern medical practices began as old wives' tales of folk remedies. This text investigates a multicultural variety of age-old remedies often dismissed by 20th-century Western medicine as harmful or foolish but now shown to have real scientific validity. This text calls upon the medical establishment to open itself up to the possibilities of alternative therapies - remedies that have withstood the test of time precisely because they work. The authors take an excursion into the world of folk medicine, unearthing stories that range widely across time and place, fron ancient Egypt to the rain forests of contemporary Latin America. The notion that modern clinical practice is the only effective medicine is challenged and current research verifies the biochemical bases for the efficacy of supposedly outdated practices.