Old Wives’ Tales
The willow has no taste and no smell – or very little – but chewing its bark is good if you have a headache, or almost any pain.
That’s not just an old wives’ tale, it’s really true. Willow bark – strictly, the cambium, the layer between the bark and the wood – contains salicylic acid, which is the active ingredient in Aspirin and many other painkillers. It was the old wives’ tale that led to the discovery. Salix is Latin for willow, and salicylic means from the willow. Of course many old wives’ tales have some truth in them – in fact they’ve probably got about as much truth in them as the promotional material put out by pharmaceutical companies, possibly more.
Of course there is likely to be a big difference between the promotional literature put out by big pharm, and the knowledge of the scientists who develop the products. They may well know precisely how effective the remedies are – things like “for 70% of the patients, the effect is too small to be sure it exists; for 6%, the negative side effects outweigh any benefit; for 15% there is some measurable nett benefit; and for 9% the benefits are substantial”. Which definitely makes the product beneficial, but not as beneficial as the promotional literature will imply – and frankly, little different from the benefits of the remedies from old wives’ tales, albeit more precisely expressed. (Of course it is also possible that the scientists do NOT know precisely how effective the remedies are, for various reasons discussed in Rationality, Science, Pseudoscience & Policy.)