But I don’t find this reliance on folk medicine charmingly idiosyncratic. Celebrating the treatment of illness with herbs purchased at the same place where love potions are sold is curious to me, especially through the gaze of an outsider. Many people I know, educated, well-off people, love alternative medicine. Whether the effect is real or placebo is not the pressing issue here, so much as the matter of choice and access. Those with resources might drink alternative tea treatments but will ultimately have the choice to have their cancer treated with chemotherapy and not herbs, an option
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