The new age of the apothecary

A few months ago I had possibly the best massage I’ve ever had. My masseuse, Anouschka, had learned her skills in a remote village in Thailand where she’d lived for a year in a mosquito-infested hut with the local medicine woman. I asked how she’d survived the mozzies. Anouschka explained that she’d just done what the villagers do: eaten a diet heavy in chilli and garlic which seeps through your pores in the night and stops you getting bitten.

Whenever she travels to exotic climes, she seeks out the nearest cow and drinks its raw milk. This, she explains, is the perfect prophylactic against the local stomach bugs. I can’t remember what she does about malaria, but it certainly doesn’t involve taking anything pharmaceutical like Malarone or Lariam. Maybe she’s been lucky, but she has never developed a fever — nor has the son who accompanied her on her hippyish jaunts.

Now some of you reading this are going to loathe lovely Anouschka and everything she represents. I know this because I’ve seen over the years the vitriol and opprobrium that is directed towards alternative medicine, be it herbal or homeopathic. I find the vehemence of the outrage quite bizarre. Surely if people want to self-treat off the grid, as it were, that should be their problem and nobody else’s. But no, advocates of conventional — ‘allopathic’ — medicine often seem to feel very, very strongly that theirs should be the only option on the table, and that those who reject it ought to be anathematised as science–denying cranks and loons.

I’m very much on Anouschka’s side. I don’t deny that Big Pharma has its place: after my pulmonary embolism, for example, I followed my GP’s prescription rather than shopping around on the internet for alternative blood-thinning remedies.