image
I really don't want to imagine the world without modern medicine because there will be a lot of disorder in things, modern medicine have been saving the world since the 80's, during the days of our forefathers, herbs have been the major medicine used in saving life and curing diseases but most aren't 100% and there was high rate of mortality. Wasn't born during the days when it was strictly herbs but I do see them old movies, there are critical state where modern drugs would have been preferred. Based on the question, what if we can't manufacture modern medicine again, can we survive on herbs 100%?
My answer will be Big No, first of all, we aren't use to it even some people hate herbs and mostly we lack experience on what and what to mixed together or the usefulness of most of the leaves we do on daily bases, even if we decided to learn and be gain knowledge about this things, we can never neglect the limitations that comes with herbs usage. Unlike medicine which work fast in the body especially injections, herbs are always slower in terms of actions and before it start working, there might be serious damage to the body immune system, also the level of potency and even efficacy is sometimes always low, most healers always say something that "An herbs that doesn't work, the leave remain 1", any time they mention those statements in movies, I will just laugh because it prove they aren't really sure if the herbs they are using will be effective on what ever illness is affecting the patient, so imagine you have running stomach and you use herbs meant for headache, or you got the herbs but don't know the right preparation or steps in making it, you know know which leave you will cook first, they one you are meant to grind into power etc, this thing right here can't work out 100%.
So what if there are life threatening issues like organs failure or diseases which herbs will they be using for such, I watched one movie back then, this kid went to the river to play and at some point, something pierce through his leg, at first they saw it as normal wound and treat it with herbs as usual but with time, instead of it healing, the leg started swelling up, they apply every medicine they can think of but none was working and the small wound became a life threatening issues, they can't amputate the leg traditionally because that means death since they don't the right instrument, after month, they accepted fate and left the boy to the hand of death while doing the little they can do until someone came from the city, saw the boy with the rotten leg and offer to help out, took him to UCH hospital back in the days where operations were carried out and he got healed. Herbs as I see it can only treat minor issues or ailments, if herbs can solve cancer, diabetes or even heart diseases, people would have seek help traditionally especially if they don't have those huge fee to pay in hospitals. There is no way we can survive with herbs alone if modern medicine seize to function