How many cures existed before the illness did?

There is an old saying that history repeats itself. Which I believe. There are many cures from the past that we now use for present day illnesses. There was a two fold problem that occurred in drugs and illnesses. We did not have the knowledge to understand the correlation between sickness and cures. And it seems as though when we finally "cure a illness" another new illness comes along. Technologically in medicine has advanced so rapidly that we dismissed many of the old standard cures because there was no doentation to support their claims. In reality we have started to take second look and found that there is truth in old cures. Back to basic seem to be true. For instances, chicken Soup. It has been used for many years and finally studies have been done that proves it does help colds and URI. We used to give children cod live oil every night before bed .Though the taste was horrible now we know that it can act as a laxative and has iron in it. Ginger a widely used spice, used properly can settle an upset stomach. Today, with rising cost of medicines people are taking a second look at old,standard remedies and some can work just as effective as modern drugs.