Just Because It's Natural, It's Good For You, Right?

Well, no, and just because it's "traditional medicine is no guarantee of it's safety

...The most dramatic instance of the potential for harm from the unregulated use of botanicals occurred in Brussels, Belgium. Women attending a weight-loss clinic participated in a program that involved taking a combination of Chinese herbs. The program had been in operation for 15 years with no ill effects. However, in the early 1990s, the company that supplied the herbs substituted Aristolochia for another, benign, herb with a similar sounding name in Chinese. Aristolochia has been widely used in herbal medicine, but it contains aristolochic acid—a powerful kidney toxin and a carcinogen. As a result of including Aristolochia in the regimen (for a period of two years), 105 women attending the clinic developed rapidly progressing kidney failure and had to go on dialysis or have kidney transplants. Many of the women went on to develop cancer of the upper urinary tract. Cases of kidney failure due to the ingestion of herbal products containing aristolochic acid have also been reported in the United States, Europe, and Asia.
....People failed to recognize the nephrotoxic effects of Aristolochia in spite of its use in many cultures worldwide over thousands of years. In an interview, Grollman explained why: “The reason, of course, is quite simple. It’s painless, and the damage happens much later, so you don’t put together the fact that you took this medicine and four years later, you have kidney failure. It’s been part of Ayurvedic, European, Chinese, and South American medicine for centuries. All of the great civilizations have used it. And not one reported its toxicity until the Belgians did 20 years ago. There are certain things that tradition can’t tell you.”

Of course the world is full of harmful things.  But women who won't let their kids out of the front (or  back) door because of all the dangers have no problem with taking an unknown herbal supplement to cure or ameliorate an imaginary condition.