System aspects of biomass use in complex applications: biorefineries for production of heat, electric power and chemicals - Biomass as Energy Source: Resources, Systems and Applications - page 137

In old traditions all over the world, herbs and crops have been important parts of the culture. The
Zulu, for instance, group medicines into black, red and white (Lipp, 1996). The black medicine
can give energy to cause the disease while white medicine can counteract this effect. The red
medicine is something in-between. In this case, the herbs are used to influence our bodies but
mostly the soul. In SouthAmerica, there are many different crops to use, but only a few hundreds
have been used and medicine men found them to be active. Usually the herbal medicine is used
in combination with different rites to enhance the effect. Sometimes it is probably these rites that
help the body to fight down diseases, but that is also important. In “western medicine” it has been
found that often “placebo medicine” is as active to cure people from diseases as the actual active
substances, so it is nothing special for ingenious people.
It is often easier to start analyzing the effect of natural substances than to try to just develop any
kind of substance for medical use. The chance that people have selected efficient herbs and crops
throughout thousands of years is higher than if you try to randomly develop a new substance. New
processes to extract active substances or modify them to get even stronger effects are research
activities going on to utilize biomass in a more qualitative than quantitative way. Concerning
microbial processes like biogas production, it has been noticed that combining different species
like algae and household waste or green crops gives better yields than having only one type of
substrate. In the same way is it better for us as living creatures to eat a little of many different
types of food than to only concentrate on one type, although humans seem to be astonishingly
adaptive to different types of food. Inuits can live on only meat and fish while many vegetarians
can live on only vegetables.
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