
The discovery of artemisinin (qinghaosu) and gifts from Chinese medicine (2011) - sohkamyung
http://www.nature.com/nm/journal/v17/n10/full/nm.2471.html
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scorpioxy
Arsenic is an effective and relatively safe substance? That's very strange
since it's used as a poison. That's the thing with herbal medicine, Chinese or
otherwise, the matter of toxicity.

Also, there isn't a lot of research into traditional medicine. The ones I can
find often have conflicting results or simply state something along the lines
of "shows promise". I wish there were more reliable studies to prove or debunk
the stories we always hear about people who recovered from incurable and/or
terminal diseases using traditional medicine. I guess there's isn't enough
money to be generated from it.

I took an interest in medicinal herbs after using ginger tea to overcome
nausea, a side effect of a drug i was taking at the time. The doctor wasn't
very helpful, it worked very nicely. But my programmer-mind has trouble
believing the folklore-ish stories about these herbs.

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Illotus
There is a lot of research into traditional medicine. It's just that when any
form is found effective it becomes just medicine. Uneffective ones stay in the
realm of traditional medicine.

There was a quite nice editorial on the subject in Nature a while back
[http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v448/n7150/full/448106a...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v448/n7150/full/448106a.html)

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phonon
Unfortunately, current formulations are not shelf stable.
[http://www.malariajournal.com/content/9/1/212](http://www.malariajournal.com/content/9/1/212)

