How did we become dependent on the doctor visit and the prescription? What happened to the ways we cared for our families before modern pharmaceutical medicine?

When the globalized economy replaces local ways of living, people exchange broad skills and community-reliance for specialized career paths.

Instead of sharing time and resources with family and neighbors to meet everybody's needs, people start to work jobs to pay for basics — and also for new commodities that are assumed essential to living a modern life.

Paying for your needs with money means you need not rely on friends and neighbors, so families and communities are no longer so tightly bound together. Instead of relying on themselves and each other, families now rely on corporate providers and outside experts.  

Local knowledge fades away and the understanding of natural remedies grows dim, all but replaced by the profitable kind of medicine that only experts know.