The cutting edge - Homeopathy.

[Rum]

There are several shops near me selling this stuff. But they never look open.

There's even a new age coach/counselor...

I hear they only have one tiny bottle of remedy in the whole shop.

[Trinity]

Haven't you lot sussed by now that the efficacy of homeopathy has nothing to do with the dilution but everything to do with the love someone is feeling when they're mixing the stuff. Tch!

[JimC]

The best of all would be an infinitely diluted herbal remedy stored inside a crystal pyramid...

[Rum]

The best of all would be an infinitely diluted herbal remedy stored inside a crystal pyramid...

I think you mean a grain store..

[Blind groper]

For your information, just to explain how a totally idiotic idea can become widely accepted, here is a bit of history.

The inventor of homeopathy was a Doctor Hahnemann in the 18th Century, the time of bullshit medicine and bleeding.

He came up with the hypothesis that symptoms were the body's way of healing itself. So if you had cold shivers when sick, the cold shivers were what cured you. For the time, it sounded a good idea. One thing a lot was known about even then, was poisons (I wonder why?). So Hahnemann started dosing his patients with poisons. If a person had an illness that caused cold shivers, he selected a poison that caused more cold shivers.

He got a strange result. He found that the more poison he gave, the more likely his patient was to die. How weird!

So the solution was to give less poison. Sure enough, the less poison he gave, the better off the patient was. So he came up with the idea of infinite dilution. The more you diluted the remedy, the better it was. And so it continues today, with moron after moron perpetrating the idiocy.

[Jason]

Haven't you lot sussed by now that the efficacy of homeopathy has nothing to do with the dilution but everything to do with the love someone is feeling when they're mixing the stuff. Tch!

Totally.

[Jason]

For your information, just to explain how a totally idiotic idea can become widely accepted, here is a bit of history.

The inventor of homeopathy was a Doctor Hahnemann in the 18th Century, the time of bullshit medicine and bleeding.

He came up with the hypothesis that symptoms were the body's way of healing itself. So if you had cold shivers when sick, the cold shivers were what cured you. For the time, it sounded a good idea. One thing a lot was known about even then, was poisons (I wonder why?). So Hahnemann started dosing his patients with poisons. If a person had an illness that caused cold shivers, he selected a poison that caused more cold shivers.

He got a strange result. He found that the more poison he gave, the more likely his patient was to die. How weird!

So the solution was to give less poison. Sure enough, the less poison he gave, the better off the patient was. So he came up with the idea of infinite dilution. The more you diluted the remedy, the better it was. And so it continues today, with moron after moron perpetrating the idiocy.

Yes, well, whatever the origins of Homeopathy, it is now a placebo-based treatment regimen which is effective as a placebo precisely because it is effective in engendering belief in the power of the treatment in those who use it. I'm not ready to dismiss the role of placebo in medicine so flippantly as many dismiss homeopathy.

[mistermack]

Yes, well, whatever the origins of Homeopathy, it is now a placebo-based treatment regimen which is effective as a placebo precisely because it is effective in engendering belief in the power of the treatment in those who use it. I'm not ready to dismiss the role of placebo in medicine so flippantly as many dismiss homeopathy.

Placebos have been proved to work in a significant number of cases.
Although you have to be careful how you word it. It's the placebo effect that works, not the placebo pill.

One problem with using it though, is that it doesn't work, unless you lie to the patient.
Obviously, homeopaths have no problem with that. They have developed a whole sophisticated web of lies.
But is it moral for a proper doctor to lie to a patient about a pill that he's giving him?
You are supposed to consent to your treatment. If the doctor lies to you, how can you really be giving your consent?

edit: Actually, I just remembered seeing some test where a doctor in a white coat gave a placebo without lying, and told the patients that it was a placebo.
And it still worked for a smaller number of the patients.