Do You Still Think Scientists Still Find Wild Plants That Have Medical Uses

Suppose you had a microscope that scientists could use to see molecules inside a cell´ organelles. How could the microscope contribute to their understandings of the cell?

There are existing microscopes capable to visualize cells and it's constituting components alive. Research of such microscopes goes quickly forward.Of course we know that there are electron microscopes, which are capable to easily visualise atoms but there is a big but! Such microscopes often need vacuum to operate what kills all alive. Additionally, electron beams themselves are deadly. As a consequence, even a short observation kills the observed object.The Nobel prize nominee, Eric Betzik, is developing fluorescence microscopes that easily outperform standard microscopes used in biology and medicine up to a relatively recent time.There are already existing such microscopes, which are capable to visualize cells alive. After using those microscopes, you do still have a living observed object contrary to observation by standard electron microscopes. For details, see the posts Jiří Kroc's answer to Has anyone ever seen atoms and molecules? and Jiří Kroc's answer to Can people see atoms with their naked eye? To rephrase it, can an atom be so dense that it’s visible to the naked eye?Picture: Fluorescence microscopy of DNA Expression in the Human Wild-Type and P239S Mutant Palladin. (Courtesy Wikipedia, the link below).See for details and pictures at Fluorescence microscope - Wikipedia (more about Super-resolution microscopy Super-resolution microscopy - Wikipedia).Those types of microscopes will cause a revolution in the biology and medicine. We can observe cells, tissues, and organs observe them alive without destroing them for the fist time in the history.

How do foreigners think about Chinese medicine?

I’m not sure I’m qualified to answer this since I’m ethnically Chinese but wasn’t born there but anyway I’d like to give my opinion and the ‘’general opinion’’ of foreigners towards Chinese medicine. In my opinion I find Chinese medicine fascinating and have used it before and have also seen other people I know use it but with that being said I personally disagree with some of the practices as they can be particularly painful such as scraping otherwise known as Gua Sha would not recommend for the sensitive. Also I believe that people tend to romanticize Chinese medicine a lot while it can be effective it’s important not to overestimate it and use it over other effective medicines just because it’s Chinese I’m sure there are some foreigners that may adopt the mindset of romanticizing Chinese medicine because it’s exotic along with hearing about some of the benefits and there are also people who believe the opposite. Please do not take this as disrespect I admire and respect the Chinese mindset of utilizing nature such as wild plants and herbs and other things as medicine but once again it is important to know that the priority of medicine is to use it to treat and cure people because it’s been tested and proven to work not because it has spiritual and other romanticized notions attached to it

Does “proven to not have been able to stand scientific scrutiny” equal “useless” for treatment of diseases? Barring the placebo effect, “useless” meaning it has no effect and is only meant to get money.

It just happened that my daughter’s school science fair (1) coincided  with a friend getting diagnosed with Lyme disease. As I started reading  into both, I though it is possible that our methods of scientific  studies have not been adequate for researching the methods of  Traditional Chinese Medicine.The mainstream science is still  narrowly focused on reducing any phenomenon to one thing: one  hypothesis, one variable, one cause, one effect, one germ, one gene (2).TCM,  on the other hand, is based on an idea that interplay of causes  produces an array of effects. As a system, TCM is about differentiating  patterns made of patients’ symptoms, constitution, and environment.That’s  why multi-system diseases like Lyme has been treated successfully in  China thousands of years ago (3), while Western medicine is just  starting to recognize the nature of the disease (4). Many humans harbor  spirochetes and mycoplasma pathogens, but only those with exposure to  (for example) stress, environmental toxins, and other infections cannot  fight the pathogens off and become chronically ill. Furthermore, once  settled, the illness can manifest itself in a wide variety and  combination of autoimmune diseases, neurological disorders, hormonal  disorders, etc.With the advances in non-traditional fields of  science like behavioral studies, social studies, economics, and data  science we become more accepting of multivariate or non-parametric  research methods. I am hopeful that the modern research methods turned  onto studying TCM will finally bring that ancient healing system in  accord with Western science (5).(1) Is exploratory research considered outside of the scientific method?(2) Frontiers Profile: Ted Kaptchuk(3) Lyme Disease, An In-Depth Interview With Heiner Fruehaufcom(4) “Why Can't I Get Better? Solving the Mystery of Lyme and Chronic Disease” Dr. Richard Horowitz(5) A Push to Back Traditional Chinese Medicine With More Data(This is a repots from my answer to "Is traditional Chinese medicine a kind of science?")

What do you know about Native American medicine?

An Auntie of a friend of mine was diagnosed with diabetes and given medicine from the doctor and told to come back in a month for a checkup and a prescription renewal. She went back and the doctors couldn’t find any evidence she ever had diabetes. She said “well, I guess your medicine worked.”The doctor said, “that isn’t to cure diabetes, it’s to control the symptoms.”She said, ”why do you call that medicine?”“Because diabetes is incurable. Medicine is to control the symptoms.”“Well, I don’t want to have to come back here every month so you can have your medicine back.”————————Western medicines have made many advances by studying native medicines around the world. The problem lies in that curing disease is unprofitable. I’m not one to knock science or the scientific method, it is capitalism that is holding back any cures.the Native American knowledge keepers (shaman is not an accurate word, then again neither is Native or American) had categorized thousands of species of plants and their uses in curing all ailments native to these continents. Everything from acetylsalicylic acid (aspirin) to cocaine was available to Native American peoples. Natives lived very healthily before contact, with highway systems across the continents. When someone who was well respected was on their deathbed, people would come from hundreds of miles around to visit with them. This is part of how the Eurasian diseases spread so rapidly across the continents.Knowledge keepers have rarely been asked to collaborate in any meaningful way with scientists. Snake oil salesmen often monetize what little knowledge they have ever gotten, and that has made our knowledge keepers leery of sharing medicinal information. It seems we’re at an impasse.

Are botanists always able to correctly name the plant species by looking at them in the wild?

Are botanists always able to correctly name the plant species by looking at them in the wild? I was reading Jules Verne's "The Mysterious Island" and it had this character called Herbert, who is a young botany enthusiast. Herbert is so good that he walks into the forest and can point to most trees and shrubs and say "This is (binomial name for the plant)." Are botanists usually so good ?Always? Off the top of their heads? Definitely not. There are far too many species. But if a botanist is familiar with that particular biome, they'd definitely know the common flora found there. Most of the specimens in a particular area are going to fall into a relatively small range of species, and learning a few dozen or a couple hundred isn't too difficult.My parents were marine biologists rather than botanists, and they taught me to love and appreciate nature.  One of my favorite things to do as a child was to run out and find a plant and bring a sample to them to identify. I managed to stump my father once or twice (he was much better with marine creatures and birds), but never my mother. They weren't professionals in that field; just avid amateurs.My mother taught me at a young age how to use a key to identify unknown species. I could walk you through our woods and impress you with my "vast knowledge", but what you wouldn't notice, probably, is the hundreds of species I didn't draw your attention to. I'd distract you with information about ethnobotany and medicinal uses to keep you busy while we passed by plants I don't know. This is something I can do even though botany isn't a particular passion of mine, but rather a minor interest. If I were actually a botanist, I'd know the binomials, as well as a whole lot more species. The real botanists I know would actually get excited if you could find a plant they'd never seen before.