I’ve been looking for a particular angle that gives me a place to put this information on the web; I’d been planning a page on “The Return of the Snake Oil Salesman" for some time, and I may eventually do such a thing nonetheless... but it occurs to me that it may well be appropriate to deal with many of those concerns here, Artemis as the Mother Goddess has long been associated with worms, snakes, “sea serpents” and other creatures that share this morphology, since this is a primary signature of Absinthe Wormwood and hence other Artemisias; some of this has been touched on in previous pages of this series.
Some forms of the Mother Goddess bear serpents on their forms, such as a Cretan form which has arms raised and snakes winding around the forearms. Such symbolism is still not well understood in my opinion, whatever may be postulated by historians about their meaning, for the actual spectrum of intended meaning is likely to be, typically, both extremely broad and involved, and associable with a formidable degree and amount of ancient knowledge.
The story of my personal involvement is as follows: Longevity magazine ran an article about a discovery that the enzyme Phosopholipase A-2 was found to play a role in some painful and degenerative back problems. Phosopholipases are common enzymes of snake and other poisonous venoms. The researcher quoted in the article put it succinctly of the victims of these diseases: “It’s as if a snake were literally biting their backs”.
Having shared this information, it was not long before I heard that persons with such types of back problems were in fact receiving experimental treatment with medicines made from denatured snake venoms-the same process by which anti-venins, agents used to treat venemous bites, are made. Told “I was on the right track”, I began to take serious note of the collections of “snake bite remedies” from the reputable herbals and scholarly works on ethnobotany I was digging through, and soon I had a list of thousands.
At some point, mulling over the information, especially because of some of the types of things that showed up on such lists, I began to wonder if these agents could be used in treating AIDS. Some fo them, like echinaceae, are already well-known and widely used as immunomodulators, although it may be unclear or unknown whether the specific example is effective against HIV. Due to pressings concerns and the increasing difficulty getting a hold of information, such an inquiry was set aside. Later, television commercials made mention of researcher Irving Sigal , killed in the 1988 Lockerbie crash of Pan Am flight 103, who pioneered work using protease inhibitor drugs against the AIDS virus, whose work set the stage for a whole generation of protease inhibitor drugs now used to fight AIDS.
At the time, much of the literature that I could find on protease inhibitors from natural sources claimed that they were toxic, disruptive of digestion, and seemed drastically against the idea that they could be of any use, a pattern in scholarly work already familiar from many, many other works such as the book that gives collected information on iridoids and iridoid derivates, which says that none of them are known to have signficiant pharmaceutical or biodynamic impact, when hundreds of iridiod-bearing plants have long been of value amongst herbalists and ethnopharmacological practitioner.
While much literature is now devoted to protease inhibitors that are very specific in categorization, one of the striking features of ethnobotanical snakebite remedies is that not are the constituents of these plants presumably capable of interfering with the foriegn proteases in addition to a hoard of other enzyme types found in venins, but the application of many various plants to numerous types of venemous bites also suggests they are applicable against a broad spectrum of proteases. If they are not working against the venom enzymes themselves, they may be modulating the immune system to do so.
Another stiking feature of these plants is that a great many of them are of little or no known or appreciable toxicity.
While literature often tends to maintain that the use of these plants is superstition, they are provided by the same sources of information that make ethnobotany a legitimate and continuing science, because when these “superstitions” are investigated by clinical researchers, they are proven to be true again and again a great percentage of the time.
Likewise is the extention of antivenins into the realm of repellants. A number of agents have the reputation for repelling snakes “and other venemous beasts”. Herpetologists seem to favor disregarding these as “pure superstition”, even when ethnobotanical works list them. There is always a great deal of attention paid to agents which repel many, many other troublesome creatures, and it only stands to reason that somewhere in the huge world of natural molecules is something for any specie to find offensive or frightening, but again the dogmatic approach prevails.
One reason that this group is also significant is that plants which repel venemous reptiles, like plants which may both repel venemous insects and treat their bites, is that there may be an “evolutionary” or other creative logic at work: if an agent has the ability to neutralize their venom, normally their sole defense, it’s in their best interest to know those agents and steer clear of them, because they signal situations in which they may be defenseless. This may yet prove to be part of the purpose of the snake’s vomeronasal organs, which posess an astonishingly acute sense of smell with an astonishing range.
It is possible that all of these substances have an even more general types of functions which serve as common denominators underlying their ethnobotanical reputations.
Thus, those plants that have this reputation may not only be viable for the expressed purpose as repellants, but may be significant sources of protease and other enzyme inhibitors.
Among these plants, and often prominent amongst them, are various species of Artemisia.
In cases where this reputation is less reasonable, such as where certain Artemisias are given the reputation of “repelling sea serpents”, as previously mentioned in this work, the designation may be a combination of factual value as repellants of various kinds, and humorous description of the rolling waves that cause seasickness as the winding undulations of a “sea serpent”, we may be looking at significant drugs which may fight nausea, which may be applicable to side-effects various chemotherapies. Cannabis is frequently utilized as an anti-nausea drug, and may have many pharmacological similarities to the Artemisias, without the pronounced inebriation.
Still, for all the promising leads that ethnobotany can produce for us, “snake medicine” and “snakebite remedies” seem to have been almost incurably fashioned into the very models of quackery and medicine fashioned purely for the sake of profit and without regard for the well being of the patrons of such medicine, conjuring in an almost Pavolvian fashion the unsavory image of the travelling “snake oil peddler”, whose remedies consist of chewed tobacco, bad whiskey and rusty nails. This seems particularly ironic when we consider the seemingly inherent unfavorable qualities of many pharmaceuticals medicines, the patent process and its ramifications, and the rampancy of iatrogenic health problems.
These remedies, too, can often be worse than the disease. Somewhere short of this “snake oil peddler” fall a great many people whose folk medice methods may have been sterotyped, by prejudice and by the propoganda of capitalist competition. Such prejudice threatens not only to be a great impediment to progress, but in doing so, threatens to be lethal to a great many.
While what follows is only the tip of the iceberg (i.e. although this is excellent coverage of the beneficial lipids in snake oils, there are many other aspects worthy of attention. For example, San-shi-dan, a product made of snake liver enzymes, has been long known and widely used.), widely respected alterantive health expert Steven Wm. Fowkes seems to emphatically concur. In “Stop the FDA: Save Your Health Freedom” Edited by John Morgenthaler and Steven Wm. Fowkes, pgs. 163-164.), we read:
"Snake Oil Quakery" by Steven Wm. Fowkes.
According to Richard A. Kunin, M.D., of San Francisco, snake oil’s modern symbolism as the epitome of quakery may be totally inappropriate. The snake not only has a multi-millenium tradition within the medical profession, it is part of the medical emblem still in use today- snakes encircling the staff of life. Over the last hundred years, the term snake oil has come to represent the best example of a worthless cure. Chemical analysis of snake oil sample, however, reveals that some have significant levels of polyunsaturated fats which serve as precursors to anti-inflammatory prostaglandin hormones. Chinese commercial snake oil contained almost 20% EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid).
Dr. Junin speculated that cold-blooded reptiles would require higher-than-normal levels of unsaturated fats to maintain flexibility during the cold temperatures of the early morning. Fat profiles varied considerably. The American black rattlesnake had over 4% EPA and alsmost no DHA (docosahexaenoic acid). Red rattlesnake oil was low in EP (less than 1%) but high in DHA (over 5%). Chinese snake oil and red rattlesnake oil were how in GLA (gamma-linolenic acid) and DGLA (dihomo-linolenic acid) while black ratlesnake oil contained 3.5% total GLA plus DGLA. Arachidonic acid, which can produce the anti-inflammatory prostaglandin PGE2, was highest in red rattlesnake oil (over 12%), median in black ratlesnake oil (under 5%), and lowest in Chinese snake oil (under 2.5%).
The branding of snake oil as quackery may have been premature. Even based on the likelihood of rancidity in the oxidation-sensitive polyunsaturate snake-oil, laws against the marketing of all snake oils unscientifically discriminate against those vendors who do know how to properly handle and preserve the essential fatty acids and those consumers who would have benefitted had the quality product been available.
Should pork be outlawed because of a high incidence of trichina larvae (a nematode parasite causing trichinosis) in some pig ranchers stock. Or how about raw milk because of the small incidence of salmonella (a bacteria causing food poisoning?) And what about eggs and homogenized milk which also carry salmonella, although at an even smaller incidence?
Hysterical quack-bashing largely creates laws which fail to protect products which are beneficial. By not discriminating between products which actually harm people and those which are worthless or, more accurately, those which might be worthless, potenially effective treatments are legislated into quackery. One obvious solution is to require proof of harm before action can be taken against products of therapies. Of course, laws against fraud and misrepresentation have been on the books for a lot longer than anybody currently alive on this planet. Fraud laws have long been available to to battle with quacks.
Quack-bashers don’t like to have to resort to fraud laws because it makes quacks (translation: products, treatments and therapists innocent until proven guilty They would rather regulate quackery out of existance by assuming worthlessness (and danger to the public) and then demanding proof of efficacy (and safety). It is much easier when quacks are guilty until proven innocent.
Editor’s note: This article orginally appeared as an editorial in the June 1990 issue of Forefront-Health Investigations, of which Steven Fowkes is the editor and publisher...
The snake-oil analyses of Richard A. Kunin, M.D., were originally published in the Western Journal of Medicine 151:208, 1989..."
Lest the imagery get the better of anyone, the essential or beneficial fatty acids listed here are also those responsible for the benefits and success of many far more familiar products, from commonplace foods to suppliments such as Evening Primrose Oil; the activities of prostaglandins is also relevant in many areas, including the functioning of aspirin.
Indeed, imagery a powerful consideration here. Much of the character and content of early propoganda in this area seemed to rely on using the fearsome nature of the reptiles itself as a tool to drive a sense of evil into the unwary consumer, and is reminscent of much commercial tactics of the time. Similar is the way in which Thomas Edison pushed for his own, rather than Westinghouse's, electrical technology to be adopted by consumers by publically electrocuting animals and telling the astonished spectators that they had been "Westinghoused to death".
Of course, innumerable people have since perished at the hands of Edison's own brainchild. The death of natural medicine at the hands of modern, surgical, "heroic" medicine at the turn of this century is a similar story, probably exclusively because of vested personal interests, is a similar story.
Still, too, in the complicated, three-dimensional computer generated models of preposterously complex molecules, unfathomable winding serpentine labyrinths, something seems lost, and of course that something may be simplicity. Eventually simplicity returns, in the form of small simple molecules which are commonly used to fight HIV, but they leave much to be desired. The active substances in many ethnobotanically indicated agents may be small molecules also, but perhaps many common denominators and indicative logistics are even simpler.
There are vast numbers of reports regarding the use of oxygenating therapies for HIV, using the introduction of increased oxygen into the body by means of ozone and peroxides, substances whose eventual gesture is to donate oxygen . There is of course debate as to the safety of these proceedures, and of course, there are inherent dangers in the misuse of these therapies- for one, more concentrated forms of peroxide can cause poisoning if ingested in excess in undiluted form- and while I cannot reccomend them in any way shape or form, there are many formidable things to consider. One of them is that even applied to open wounds, the topical application of hydrogen peroxide seems reasonably safe, and seems almost selective in that it seems to be far more damaging to microbes than the potential host.
Another thing to consider is that in the very definition and classification of HIV, that is, in determining whether or not it is communicable as are colds and flus, though the air and through breathing, it should be classified as eitheraerobic or anaerobic. Because it is eaily destroyed by the air, that is, by oxygen, it is anaerobic, and this very classification inherently identifies an agent that indeed can destroy it. It also implies the possible strategies it must use to maintain an environment within the body where ti can persist.
Thus, the very first things that needed to be known about HIV indeed imply that this basic type of courses of treatment is generically sound.
If such oxygen donors as ozone and hydrogen peroxide leave something to be desired, perhaps the “molecular peroxides”, larger molecules with peroxide moities, that are found in many Artemisias, do not. Such molecules may be the active principle underlying the success of Artemisia annua against malaria, which seemed to be substantiated by the Army’s interest in testing it. Such Artemisias likewise have insect repellant properties, and help underscore the possibility that such repellants are what they are because they have subsequent antidotal properties; it may be that such astringent or oxidizing materials threaten to cause coagulation of the blood in mosquito drinking tubes, possibly also because of electron donation by certain aromatic molecules. (the repellant ,“Citronella”, for example, is not possessed of molecular peroxides.) Electron donation may be the eventual act of the oxygen in question.
There are also other possibilities. If it is not certain that the magentic properties of Mugwort originate through actual magnetic materials in spite of the classical ecclectic association of the plant with iron and iron-rich habitats, they may occur through the phenomenon of muon magnetization. Muons, also known as heavy electrons, may be part of some reactions involving peroxides. They are suspected to cause matter of which some of the physical properties undergo vast increases. They are also associated with certain transmutations of elements.
The notion that muons incorporated into molecules that promote human Growth Factor, thereby drastically increasing their properties, is put forth as a theory of the Alchemic “Elixir of Life”, and why the production of such agents has long been associated with the art of transmuting elements, in other pages on this site. While it might be especially hazardous to speculate that an exotic matter form of human Growth Factor promotors has potential to fight HIV, the same process of enrichment may affect other factors which indeed have such abilities, and the often mentioned similarities between certain aspects of HIV and certain aspects of aging is duly noted.
Perhaps also relevant under the discussion of iron is Kushi’s alchemical work. Iron produced by Kushi by transmution was purported to have unusual physical properties. This iron may therefore be muonic iron, having captured residual muons from the process of its own transmutation.
Perhaps it should be considered what the consequences would be if this alchemic iron were incorporated into hemoglobin or into red blood cells. While I have no specific knowledge of the actual process by which white cell counts are decreased in immune deficiencies, white blood cells do develop from red blood cells. Prevention of the development of white cells by interfering with red ones is one possible avenue, and the oxygen-carrying bodies are a logical target for a pathogen that is abhorrent of oxygen. The question remains whether the incorporation of alchemic iron into red blood cells would produce cells which cannot be prevented by pathogens from maturing into white ones, thus raising white cell counts. Aggregatory functions of blood cells might also be enhanced.
Interestingly, this alchemic iron may have similarities to what is called “Ayurvedic Iron”.
Another possibility is that certain muonized molecules have enhanced ability to compete for and adhere to receptor sites, thus excluding the protruding tags that the pathogens have which fit them. It is possible that the overflow of calcium reported in “AIDS dementia” results because the pathogens occupy the receptor sites on the nerve endings, so that in order to destroy them with their “superoxide bursts”, the scavenger cells or macrophages , end up destroying the nerve endings in the process, allowing calcium ions to spill forth from the ruptured channels into the blood.
It may be possible that if the pathogens can be excluded from the nerve endings and receptor sites by certain materials, that the macrophages can attack them without doing neurological damage, or at least something with some semblance to this could make a relevant difference.
Interestingly, the topic of HIV’s ability to be passed to unborn children may rightly conjure the Protectoress of Children in some way, although with all possible caution. Once again, the Artemisias are known for their propensity to induce premature labor or cause miscarriage. Still, not only may there be important clues within that train of thought, but there is the possibility that amongst the rationale for Artemis’ role as a virgin goddess and a protectoress of children against sexual predators, that this in not the first time that the world has known or faced HIV.
This may have also been a contributor to many sexual stigma and taboos and “repressive” moralities in many cultures
Hence, many remedies and even cures, may be found in thinly-veiled allegorical form, and in the characteristic associations of various materials with deities of appropriate functions.
Take for instance the pine. One of Artemis’ primary and most fundamental associations is with this tree, and the Ephesian Artemis herself is illustrative of the singular role in which the pine can serve to provide survival in the wilderness for indefinite periods of time. If we extend this line of thinking in that direction, we may become suspicious that Pines as a genus may have some ability to fight HIV.
Of course, by “normal” or “conservative” standards of reasoning, this supposition would be preposterous, outlandish, and superstitious at best.
This does not alter the fact that the journal “AIDS Research and Human Retrorviruses” reported (1990, Feb; 6(2): pgs. 205-217. Authors: Lai, K.; Donovan, J.; Takamaya, H.; Sakagami, H.; Tanaka A.; Konno, K.; Nonoyama, M.) that “it was previously shown that two fractions, (PC6 and PC7) extracted from pine cones of the Japanese white pine Pinus parvifloria... have potemnt immunopotentializing effects. Here we show that PC6 and PC7 inhivited HIV-1 replication (greater than 95%) in a dose-dependent manner, in chronically infected CR10/HIV-1 cells and in acute cytolytic HIV-1 infection of CEM cells. Treatment of CEM cells, prior to or after acute infection with HIV-1, reduced subsequent viral production, but the best inhibitory effect was obtained with treatment before and after infection; an 80% inhibition was achieved with as little as 3 micorgrams/ml of PC6. Comparable results were also obtained when PC6 was used to inhibit HIV-1 replication in the U937 human histiocytic lymphoma cell line. Pot PC6 and PC7 were relatively nontoxic to cells. The anti-HIV-1 effect of PC6 and PC7 we observed in this report, coupled with earlier reports of their immunopotentiating properties, suggest there potential as ideal therapeutic agents for the treatment of AIDS.”
Emphasize “ideal therapeutic agents”.
Ironically, the pines in Asia are the closest thing to Alchemic Elixir plants, being noted in magickal books with the amazing, if somewhat exaggerated, reputation in the East that eating pine nuts produces immortality and invulnerability.
Between this medical report, the other roles of the pine, and the widespread use of pycnogenol in nutritional support, it isn't that much of an exaggeration.
Likewise, as has been previously demonstrated in this series in the pages concerning Artemisia absinthum and other Wormwoods, the Bible serves as a source of travestically expressed and thinly veiled ethnobotany, of similar geographic and ethnologic origin to the mythology of the Greeks.
Note that the appropriate label for this may concern the propensity to misidentify AIDS as a “gay disease”, thus one of the more controversial sections of the Bible, one which at face value is not only filled with hate, but has endlessly confounded the process of seeking cures for AIDS while the stereotype long allowed AIDS to spread unsuspected heterosexually, affecting women and subsequently children.
Still, as we have discussed the possible role that heavy particles associated with transmutation may play in the possible pharmacodynamics of various natural products here already, note the uncanny way in which the Biblical story of Sodom and Gammorah does indeed, against phenomenal odds, touch on the phenomena of transmutation of elements!
Likewise, as we discuss oxygen as a possible remedy, if oxygen should for some reason prove to be unsatisfactory for this purpose, the first thing that should occur to a chemist is to seek a possible substite through the categorization of elements of similar physical properties in the periodic table. This proceedure casts attention to the element sulfur, which has many similar properties. Sulfur of course is a common feature of many antibiotic drugs, is used in the formation of antibodies, and also occurs along with oxygen in the superoxide bursts which scavenger cells utilize to destroy pathogens and faulty cells.
Not ironically, if we consider that the standard, traditional fashion in all mythology is to name the significant things which pertain to a situation, within a fictional account that humourously has some details backwards which are either obvious to all or are easily explained by competent instructors or priests...
Sulfur, or brimstone, is one of the two elements occur in God’s unfathomable and inexplicable, unjustified wrath on people of Sodom and Gamorrah.
Hence, the scripture that is so easily taken to justify a terribly un-Goldy hatred, persecution, and lack of forgiveness, is easily revealed to be a doctine of hope and possible help to the horrible diseases which may particularly affect those in question.
The story will likely yeild even more valuable clues if this is indeed the fact, but already there are several impossible coincidences that act as contextual qualifiers and clues, in addition to the impossible and unforgivable wrath attributed therein to the supreme being.
The application of such providence and wisdom of course depends on the courage to interpret mythos in a benevolent way, regardless of persuasion or belief system.
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