Homeopathy: Is there Anything To It?

Although it’s not as big here in the United States, homeopathy is one of the most popular forms of alternative medicine in the world. The homeopathy industry is currently worth about $10 billion, and it’s expected to rise to over $20 billion by 2030. This is especially impressive because homeopathic medicine is extremely affordable.

A typical bottle of homeopathic medicine only costs $10 or less, no matter what ailment it’s treating, which is one of the things that makes it so appealing. An appointment to see a homeopath averages $100-300 (though they can be much more expensive than that), which is also comparable to the cost of a doctor visit in the US without insurance. And most importantly to many fans of homeopathy, the remedies are all natural, gentle and noninvasive, and allegedly they don’t have any side effects.

But as popular as this practice is becoming, is there actually any merit to it? Is there anything to suggest that homeopathy is an effective form of treatment? Chances are that everyone already has an opinion one way or the other, but let’s take an objective look at the evidence and see how much veracity there is to the claims of homeopathy’s efficacy.

Alternative Medicine and You

Before we get into homeopathy itself, it’s worth taking a moment to talk about alternative medicine in general. Many people, before researching the topic, don’t actually know what homeopathy is. It’s often assumed to be a synonym for the catch-all term of alternative medicine, rather than being a very specific practice within alternative medicine. That said, while we will be focused predominantly on homeopathy, it’s still important to address the concept of alternative medicine as a whole.

People use the phrase alternative medicine to describe anything that is an alternative to so-called “real” medicine. By definition, alternative medicine is anything that hasn’t been proven to work, and in some cases they are methods that cannot be proven to work. However, that does not mean that there can’t be validity to any of their claims.

Sure, most forms of alternative medicine don’t actually have any validity, but it is important to remember that modern medicine is still an extremely new practice within the context of human history. Herbal remedies have existed for thousands of years, and many of them have proven to be extremely effective.

For example, use of willow bark as a form of pain relief dates back at least 4,000 years to the ancient Sumerians and Egyptians. The practice is probably much older than that, we just don’t have written records of it. These people obviously had no idea what acetylsalicylic acid (aspirin) was or why the trees seemed to relieve pain symptoms, and whatever theories ancient people had for why it worked were probably absolute nonsense involving magic. They were right for the wrong reasons, but the conclusion that willow bark was an effective treatment was still accurate.

The same can be said for aloe vera and a variety of other herbal remedies. Many plants are still used in modern medicine, and thanks to scientific research we now understand exactly why and how they work. Of course, there are also plenty of herbal remedies that we can prove absolutely do not work the way alternative medicine claims they do.

That’s all well and good for plants which have active compounds that can be isolated in a lab, but what about something more intangible, like meditation? Sixty years ago if you asked your doctor about meditation, they likely would’ve said something like, “I don’t believe in any of that hippie bullshit”, probably while taking a drag of their cigarette and blowing smoke in your face.

Fast forward to today, and millions of Americans are prescribed meditation by medical doctors every year. There have been hundreds or possibly thousands of research studies conducted on meditation, and the clinical results of these studies seem to show that it’s highly effective at certain things such as alleviating anxiety, depression, and pain, as well as physiological benefits.

However, a lot of that research has been criticized as using poor methodology or showing inconclusive results. Scientists have also failed to identify any mechanism by which meditation would result in the perceived benefits. Because our understanding of how it would be beneficial is incomplete and more rigorous testing is required to prove the efficacy of meditation, it is still considered alternative medicine.

And maybe that will always be the case. Maybe conducting more studies with better methodology will show there’s nothing to it, or maybe it will not only prove that meditation works, but also reveal the underlying mechanisms that make it effective treatment; it’s impossible to say which way that’s going to go.

But the point is that a lot of modern medicine, especially early medicine before we began synthesizing compounds for use in treatments, is based on ancient wisdom. And even today, we’re learning that some things that have been considered alternative medicine potentially might have validity as treatment.

A lot of it is still absolute bullshit that has been thoroughly disproven, all that’s being said is that, if you aren’t already well versed on a topic like this, it’s worth keeping an open mind; just not so open that your brain falls out. Now with that diplomacy towards the broad notion of alternative medicine in general out of the way, it’s time to finally get to what we came here for. It’s time to thoroughly disprove the absolute bullshit that is homeopathy.

Better Than the Alternative

Although it’s considered the oldest form of alternative medicine to originate in Europe, homeopathy is only a little over 200 years old. It was created by German physician Samuel Hahnemann. That may sound sarcastic, but Hahnemann really wasn’t a quack; he was actually pretty sensible. He was just a poor physician trying his best with the limited knowledge that was available at the time.

And when we say he was a poor physician, we don’t mean he was bad at his job—we mean he was broke. Hahnemann was a trained doctor and chemist, but he struggled financially because he couldn’t abide by the medical practices at the time. He firmly believed that common medical practices like bloodletting and treating open wounds with mercury did more harm than good, and as a result he became disillusioned with mainstream medicine of the late 1700s. Like we said, pretty sensible guy since those treatments are objectively horrible.

Unfortunately, while he was correct in identifying that the mainstream medical practices of the time were dangerous and often deadly to patients, he didn’t have a better idea yet. It’s hard to make money as a doctor who refuses to treat his patients, hence his impoverished state. Hahnemann resorted to translating medical texts to German as a way to get by, and it was while translating one such text that he would make his breakthrough.

He was translating a treatise by famed Scottish physician William Cullen when he came across a passage that claimed the plant cinchona cured malaria because it was bitter. On face value, that makes perfect sense for 18th century medicine. The medical field was based on miasma theory and the four humours, so a plant curing a disease specifically because it was bitter wasn’t an outrageous claim to make in that era.

But Hahnemann disagreed. Lots of plants were bitter, yet cinchona was the only one that was effective at fighting off malaria. He correctly identified that there had to be some different underlying mechanism than bitterness that would cause cinchona to be useful against malaria, so he did the same thing that many great scientists both before and after him did, even though they really shouldn’t have: he experimented on himself.

Hahnemann decided to eat a whole bunch of cinchona bark to see what would happen, and he developed symptoms similar to those of malaria patients. This happened for the same reason that the bark was effective for treating malaria: it contained quinine. However, quinine is a bit tricky because while it is effective as medicine, it is also toxic to humans. And the difference between a therapeutic dose and a toxic dose is a lot smaller than we’d probably like.

The effects Hahnemann experienced were the result of quinine toxicity, and they just happened to resemble the same symptoms that are caused by malaria. That they had similar symptoms was just a happy coincidence that didn’t really mean anything, but Hahnemann decided to take this observation and run with it.

First, he concluded that any healthy person would have experienced the same effects from cinchona that he did, despite not testing it on anyone else. That’s not really how science works, but he did happen to be largely correct. More importantly, however, he recognized that he ate way more cinchona bark than a malaria patient would have. The only logical conclusion he could draw from this was that something that caused symptoms in a healthy person could be used to cure those same symptoms in a sick person, so long as they were administered a small dose of the substance.

And thus homeopathy was born.

The word “homeopathy” comes from the Latin for “like suffering”, and Hahnemann based it on what he called the “law of similars”, often expressed using the phrase “like cures like”. He published his first paper on homeopathy in 1796, which was rather fortuitous timing. That was the same year it was discovered that you could vaccinate against smallpox using the cowpox virus, something that seemed to support Hahnemann’s law of similars.

But the key to homeopathy is in the preparation of the medications. As mentioned, Hahnemann concluded that small doses were required to make a cure effective, and the smaller the dose the better. This led to a process of dilution and succussion (violent shaking) that he called “potentization”. And it cannot be stressed enough how diluted these remedies were.

There are two different ways that the level of dilution is normally measured: X and C. These are just the Roman numerals for 10 and 100, and they’re used because they’re always preceded by an Arabic numeral.

For example, let’s take the homeopathic dilution 3X. The X means that you start with one part of the active ingredient, like cinchona bark, and nine parts of water (or maybe a water/alcohol solution). This is then succussed, where it is shaken and slammed down onto a rubber pad exactly ten times to properly mix up the solution.

Because the dilution is 3X, that means this process happens three total times. So you do it once, then take one drop of the resulting solution and mix it with nine parts water. Succuss again, then take one drop of that solution and mix it with nine parts water, succuss, and you have a 3X solution. At this level of dilution it is one part active ingredient for every 999 parts water.

You may be asking yourself if that would even be an effective dose, and we’ll get to that later, but 3X would actually be an exceptionally high dose by homeopathic standards. The most common dilutions used are 30C and 200C, meaning you mix the active ingredient with 99 parts water, shake it up, then repeat that process either 29 or 199 more times. Hahnemann personally advocated for 30C dilution for most medications.

Suddenly, with his theory of homeopathy published, Hahnemann was no longer a broke doctor struggling to survive. Okay, maybe not suddenly since it didn’t happen overnight, but he was able to become a successful practitioner of medicine pretty quickly.

You see, Hahnemann’s big problem had been that he didn’t want to slice people’s arms open and replace their blood with arsenic, or whatever the fuck his contemporaries were doing. He knew this was a terrible idea, but he hadn’t had an alternative, either. But thanks to his new theory, he finally did have an alternative form of medicine he could offer his patients.

Did his new homeopathic treatments actually work? It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that whatever poison was used for his medications was so diluted that there wouldn’t have been a lethal dose left in his prescriptions. And yes, he often did use poisons like belladonna as the active ingredient, because like we said, he wanted to cure symptoms by giving a patient something that would cause those symptoms.

But again, it didn’t matter if his treatment worked, because it was better than the alternative. All of this was born from Hahnemann’s belief that contemporary medicine was actively harmful to patients, and he was absolutely correct. Many patients who would have recovered on their own died under the care of doctors giving them dangerous and ineffective treatments, so literally doing nothing would have provided better patient outcomes than the accepted treatments at the time. People took notice of how well his patients did, and the popularity of homeopathy quickly rose.

Hahnemann practiced homeopathy from the time his paper was published in 1796 until 1800, when he took a little break to do some science. Over the next few years, Hahnemann undertook a process called homeopathic proving. Essentially, he just catalogued everything he could find that produced some sort of symptoms when given to humans, such that he would have a master list of what to prescribe to people based on the symptoms they were experiencing.

The first list of provings was published in 1805, and a second in 1810. Also in 1810 he published The Organon of the Art of Healing. A few years later the book was revised and renamed to The Organon of Medicine, and Hahnemann would continue to revise it right up until his death when the sixth edition was published.

And again, it’s worth giving him credit here for constantly revising his work and updating it with new research. That’s how science is supposed to work, so good on Hahnemann for taking his work seriously. In fact, The Organon of Medicine is still the definitive text for homeopaths around the world.

Unfortunately, that’s not a good thing. It’s great that Hahnemann kept updating his work, but the homeopathic text hasn’t been updated a single time since his death in 1843. That means this entire branch of alternative medicine is based on research that predates germ theory and modern medicine by decades, and there have been no attempts to reconcile Hahnemann’s work with our current understanding of science.

But Does It Work?

No, of course it doesn’t work. Let’s elaborate.

The biggest conceptual flaw with homeopathy is the level to which the active ingredient is diluted. Hahnemann advocated for 30C as the standard dilution, though in his later years he would sometimes dilute his medications all the way to 200C. However, even he realized that you can’t dilute something forever.

Of course, he realized it in sort of an intuitive way, merely stating that “there must be a limit to the matter”. Homeopathy was created before the discovery of atoms or molecules, so there was no way to prove what that limit was (or if there even was one). And to be fair, because he was working with small volumes of liquid, it’s easy to lose sight of what was happening.

Imagine you put a drop of belladonna extract or something in a vial with nine drops of water and shake it up. Or even better, imagine it’s a drop of red food colouring since that’s probably easier for most of us to visualize. In a world without atoms, you can see the red colouring diffuse throughout the vial, turning the entire thing red. Repeat the process by using 1 drop of the diluted solution and 9 more drops of water and the same thing will happen, it will just be a lighter or more faded shade of red.

But how long can this really go on? Because everything was being done with small vials, you might not realize that what was happening was actually an exponential function. You started at 1 part in 10, but by 24X (or 12C) it would be 1 part active ingredient in every 1024 parts water. And this is the magic number that Hahnemann was unaware of.

Technically, the magic number is 6.02 times 1023, also known as the Avogadro number, but that is the limit of dilution. That’s not the actual purpose of Avogadro’s number, which is about molecules of gas in a specific volume, it just happens to be useful for this as well. Anyway, once you reach that level of dilution, it is effectively impossible to have even a single molecule of the original substance. And the homeopathic standard of 30C goes well beyond that, to 1 part active ingredient in 1060 parts water.

That’s an inconceivably large number, so let’s put it into perspective by using another needlessly large number. In order to have a single molecule of active ingredient in a 30C solution, you would need a container of water roughly 10 billion times the size of Earth, give or take.

And to make a 200C solution, as that is another common dilution in modern homeopathy, you would need more atoms than exist in the entire observable universe. Actually, you would need more atoms than exist in 10300 universes, a number so comically large that it’s impossible to scale to something remotely comprehensible by our feeble brains.

In case all of these giant numbers made your eyes gloss over, the point is that, statistically, there is a 0% chance that homeopathic medicine contains any of the original active ingredient. The substance is diluted past the point where the original medicine should be present, and then it’s diluted another 18 times just for good measure. Homeopathic medicine is literally just water dropped on sugar pills.

But this is also why homeopathic remedies are considered to be completely free of side effects. Modern medicine often has the risk of annoying or uncomfortable side effects, but homeopathic medicine is able to avoid that risk by just being water instead of medicine. You know, assuming you discount the side effect of not actually treating whatever illness required medication in the first place. Of course, the fact that these medications claim to not have any side effects should also be evidence that they can’t have an active ingredient.

Also, the notion that they are free from side effects isn’t completely true, either. If prepared “properly”, meaning the medicine is just water or sugar pills, then homeopathic cures shouldn’t have side effects. If they are prepared improperly and they actually do contain an active ingredient, however, they can have severe or even deadly side effects. Don’t forget: homeopathy is based on diluting substances that produce harmful effects in humans, so if you actually do consume those substances instead of just water, you’re gonna have a bad time.

Even early research into homeopathy showed that it wasn’t effective. The placebo effect was formally defined in 1811, though in a derogatory way. Detractors of homeopathy saw it as nothing more than a way for doctors to make shitloads of money by selling placebos to wealthy patients, and they sought to prove that it was all a load of nonsense.

Unfortunately, because the researchers were seeking specifically to disprove homeopathy, there was quite a bit of selection bias when choosing subjects for the trial. And because the results were based on self reporting of effects of the medications, those seeking to discredit homeopathy could just report there were no effects regardless of whether or not it was true. It’s not actually compelling evidence at all, but it was still profoundly important for one simple reason.

The experiment, known as the Nuremberg Salt Test of 1835, was the first ever randomized double blind study. These types of studies are the gold standard of research, and the people who set up the study went to great lengths to ensure none of the samples were contaminated and that neither the subjects nor the researchers knew who was getting the placebo and who was getting the homeopathic remedy. Other parts of the methodology may call the results into question, but this was still a huge step forward for scientific research in general.

For his part, Hahnemann dismissed the results of the test entirely. And to be fair, a lot of his criticism was valid. After all, the results of the experiment aren’t really considered reliable today. He also believed that group testing in this manner wasn’t effective, as each person’s treatment needed to be personally designed for them, something we’ll get back to in a moment.

It is unfortunate that Hahnemann completely dismissed this research, though. He generally comes across as a reasonable and intelligent person, and it would have been good to see him apply more scientific rigor to this theory. But seeing as it was designed, operated, and filled with skeptics, it’s understandable why he would have been annoyed by the salt test. He was challenging the objectively terrible practices of mainstream medicine, and he likely would have seen this as a transparent attempt to discredit his work.

That someone in his position wouldn’t give such criticism the time of day isn’t exactly shocking.

And as mentioned earlier, he did revise The Organon of Medicine several times throughout his life. Clearly he was interested in refining his work and making it as accurate as possible, though that does bring us back to that other issue with homeopathy: it has never been revised since Hahnemann’s death.

The definitive book on homeopathy was written before the acceptance of germ theory or the discovery of atoms and molecules, and it hasn’t been updated to reflect our greater understanding of chemistry and physics. To say that’s not good is a colossal understatement.

Many ancient remedies are still in use today because, thanks to things like organic chemistry, we can prove exactly why they work. But the entire theory behind homeopathy completely defies the laws of chemistry and physics. The theory made sense 230 years ago when it was conceived, but we know better now. There’s simply no reason anybody should still be buying into this nonsense.

Honestly, it’s doubtful that Hahnemann would still be trying to sell the world on homeopathy, either. Obviously no one alive today met him personally so maybe that’s giving the man way too much credit, but if he had access to all of the medical knowledge we have now, he would likely dismiss his own theory as a clever but misguided attempt to understand medicine without the proper knowledge.

Do You Believe in Magic?

While debunking the obviously false premise of homeopathy, we threw a lot of numbers out there to show that it is physically impossible. But since people still practice homeopathy, and indeed it is rising in popularity, how do people reconcile reality with their beliefs? The answer is simple: it’s magic.

Okay, they don’t actually call it magic, but they may as well. The modern explanation for how homeopathy works, something that Hahnemann never once suggested and hopefully would be appalled by, is that water has memory. Through the process of succussion, they argue that the essence of the medicine is transferred to the water, which retains a memory of the properties that medicinal ingredient contained.

First of all, this is ludicrous. That’s not how science works at all, and this is literally just magic being explained using pseudoscientific gibberish. More importantly, though, you better pray that water doesn’t have memory. Whenever you drink a glass of water, do you have any idea how much shit and vomit and other horrible things have previously been in that water?

Sure, there may have been some penicillin or aspirin in it as well at some point, but statistically it’s going to mostly have been poop. Do you really want there to be a physiological effect on your body based on the water’s memory of the essence of things that have been in it beforehand? That’s not how you cure disease, that’s how you die on the Oregon Trail from dysentery. Homeopaths will argue that the water wasn’t properly succussed to transfer the energy to the water, but you have to realize the extent to which that just makes this sound even more like magic rather than actual medicine.

That ridiculous argument aside, there is one key fact that homeopaths always point to prove that homeopathy works, which is that people believe it works. If you think that sounds like circular logic you would be correct, and it is genuinely maddening trying to listen to someone explain their supposed proof that homeopathy is effective.

That’s not to say that nobody feels better after taking homeopathic remedies, they just happen to do so at exactly the same rate people feel better after taking placebos. Because that’s all homeopathy is, a placebo. There is absolutely no credible evidence that it is any more effective than a placebo, though there is plenty of discredited evidence based on horrible methodology that makes that claim.

But hey, who needs credible research when you have anecdotes and testimonials? And that is pretty much the entire basis for the proliferation of homeopathy. People go to a homeopath, take a treatment, then feel better thanks to the placebo effect. They then believe it works, so they recommend it to friends and continue using it themselves.

Homeopaths will argue that the effects of their treatment are absolutely better than placebos, though they can’t provide actual data for this. It’s all just statements like, “If it isn’t better than a placebo, then why do so many people use it?” To be clear, that is a completely asinine argument.

In the late 1990s, the most popular ISP in the United States was AOL. That’s not because it was good or reliable, because it was absolute shit and half the time you couldn’t even connect to their servers, it just became popular thanks to their relentless marketing campaign. And once it became the most popular ISP, they then got to advertise as being number one in America, as if that somehow meant that it must be good by virtue of popularity. If you need any more proof that popularity does not equal quality, please remember that Two and a Half Men was the most watched comedy in America for seven years.

Anyway, this is essentially the same thing homeopaths are arguing: that if people believe in homeopathy, it clearly must be good. Not only good, but better than a placebo. And yet none of the data supports this theory.

Another way the argument will be framed is that if homeopathy was just the placebo effect, then why do people get positive results after taking homeopathic medicine when traditional medicine has already failed to help them? And this is where the real power of homeopathy lies: the “doctor” visits.

When you go to a doctor, how long is your typical appointment? In the US, a yearly physical is probably about 30 minutes, but your average appointment is only about 15 minutes long. In the EU visits are closer to 10 minutes.

Modern medicine is all about treating conditions as efficient and effectively as possible, and to many patients this comes off as very cold and impersonal. In the United States, it’s also seen as very profit driven with an emphasis on cycling through patients as fast as possible.

An appointment with a homeopath, however, usually lasts at least an hour and often as much as three hours. The first visit does, anyway. Subsequent visits are typically only about 30 minutes. But during that first visit, the homeopath will ask all sorts of questions that have absolutely nothing to do with the medical condition you need treated.

How’s your marriage going? What’s your favourite type of weather? What foods do you love or hate? Does this outfit make me look fat?

It’s just hours of questions so that the homeopath can get to know everything about not just the symptoms you’re experiencing, but about you as a person. This is because homeopathy purports to take a holistic approach to medicine, treating the person as a whole rather than any specific symptom. Only by taking part in this lengthy and extensive interview can the homeopath determine what the best medication is for a person.

While that sounds great, and a lot of people wish their doctors took the time to know them as a person, a lot of this isn’t necessary for the effective practice of medicine. In the case of a House M.D. style diagnostic mystery, then sure: as much information as possible is really important, especially as it relates to possible environmental causes of a condition. But your run of the mill ailments, like streptococcus bacteria, don’t give a shit what your opinion of Taco Tuesday is, nor do the antibiotics used to treat them.

Regardless, this attention the patient receives and the belief that they are receiving a personalized treatment designed specifically for them can certainly explain why people who had no success or placebo effect from modern medicine might experience a placebo effect from homeopathy; the entire experience is essentially designed to bring out the placebo effect in full force.

Oh yeah, and if a person resorts to homeopathy after other medicine has failed, there’s always the chance that they just got better on their own. Our bodies are designed to fight off infections, but that can take time. If a traditional doctor doesn’t produce immediate results, but then a few days later you see a homeopath and are suddenly better the following day, that doesn’t mean that the magic water they gave you helped, it just means that your body finished fighting off the infection on its own.

Ultimately, every credible research study has shown that homeopathy worked no better than a placebo. Many of these studies were criticized by homeopaths for not having the extended 1-3 hour consultations at the beginning, so a number of studies have been conducted in which all patients received those lengthy consultations regardless of whether or not they were in the placebo group. Unsurprisingly, these studies also showed no difference between the placebo group and those receiving homeopathic medicine.

That said, the overall patient response was better in studies where patients received the hours long consultation. There was no difference between the placebo group and those receiving “actual” treatment, but the patients’ self reported outcomes were better than in the studies in which no such consultation was given. This certainly suggests that the real therapeutic power of homeopathy isn’t from the medicine, but from the long consultations in which the patient has the opportunity to feel like they are being heard and validated by a “medical professional”.

Of course, it also suggests that there’s nothing therapeutic about any of this and it is definitely all just the placebo effect, but there is something to be said about the value of giving patients this sort of personal care just so their brains can trick themselves into thinking they don’t feel as much pain anymore.

A Victimless Crime?

Now that we have thoroughly established that homeopathy is magical nonsense with no real medicinal value beyond the placebo effect, it raises an interesting question: is that even a bad thing? The placebo effect is well documented to improve subjective patient outcomes, such as how much pain or stress they’re experiencing. There are some people who recognize homeopathy as unscientific nonsense yet still advocate its use as a powerful placebo, arguing that it isn’t hurting anyone.

Unfortunately, that isn’t the case at all. It’s hard to pin down exact numbers on something like this, but it appears that the majority of people who start seeking homeopathic remedies do so for minor ailments. Sometimes people with terminal conditions will turn to homeopathy out of desperation when modern medicine has already failed to help, but in general people usually start with small things that carry little risk.

For example, a person might seek out a homeopath on the advice of a friend, in the hopes that it will alleviate their cold symptoms. After seeing the homeopath that person will then feel better, either from the placebo effect or because their body fought off the cold on its own. Or both. They were willing to take the gamble because it was low stakes, as they obviously knew that the common cold wasn’t going to kill them, but because they perceived there to be a benefit, that person may then continue to up the ante.

This is when things can get really dangerous. The more a person’s belief in homeopathy increases, the more they will rely on it. That’s fine for a time, when they are only dealing with minor illnesses for which the placebo effect as treatment is enough. But once they suffer something that actually demands medical intervention, they may delay seeking help from modern medicine in lieu of seeking out homeopathic treatment first.

That’s not great, as the longer you delay treatment for serious conditions the more the chance for a good outcome decreases.

In short, while it may seem like a harmless way to make somebody feel better, homeopathy is dangerous pseudoscience that can have dire consequences. Besides, much like with eugenics, the Nazis loved and staunchly advocated for homeopathy. That’s generally a good sign that an idea is on the wrong side of history. They even used concentration camp prisoners as subjects for their research into homeopathy, though to be fair, being fed harmless sugar pills is probably the best thing that happened to anyone during their stay at Auschwitz.

Wrap Up

There is not now, nor has there ever been, any evidence that homeopathy is an effective method of treating anything. Even research back when Hahnemann was still alive disproved his theory, and he merely ignored it. The Nuremberg Salt Test was plagued with issues like selection bias, but given that they went so far as to invent the concept of a double blind test for that study, one would like to think that they would have said, “holy shit, he was right” if they discovered there was anything to homeopathy.

And as noted earlier: with the information that was available in the late 1700s, this wasn’t a horrible theory to come up with. If nothing else, it certainly proved that not treating patients at all was far better than the medical treatments of the era. But we have more information now, and we know this was just ridiculous junk science.

Or at least it was just junk science, but now that the concept of “water memory” has been introduced, it’s straight up magic. The only difference between a bottle of homeopathic medicine and a bottle of holy water is that the holy water actually still has salt in it, rather than just the memory of the essence of salt.

But for anyone that hasn’t been convinced and still thinks homeopathy is real, consider this: take a sip of water. Now here is a very real list of things that the water you just drank could have a memory of: Fish Poop. Your Poop. Uric acid from dinosaur pee.

Some kelp. JFK Jr.’s decomposing corpse. A cool rock somebody skipped along the water. The ebola virus.

And yes, that singular drop of calcium carbonica that a homeopath has long since diluted out of existence. You better pray that the process of succussion gave the water retrograde amnesia.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is homeopathy?

Homeopathy is a form of alternative medicine that uses highly diluted substances to treat ailments. It is based on the principle of ‘like cures like,’ where a substance that causes symptoms in a healthy person can cure those same symptoms in a sick person.

How popular is homeopathy worldwide?

Homeopathy is one of the most popular forms of alternative medicine in the world, with an industry worth about $10 billion, expected to rise to over $20 billion by 2030.

What is the cost of homeopathic medicine and consultations?

A typical bottle of homeopathic medicine costs $10 or less. An appointment to see a homeopath averages $100-300, which is comparable to the cost of a doctor visit in the US without insurance.

What is the basis of homeopathic remedies?

Homeopathic remedies are based on the principle of ‘like cures like’ and involve a process of dilution and succussion (shaking) called ‘potentization.’ The most common dilutions used are 30C and 200C, meaning the active ingredient is diluted to an extent where it is statistically impossible for any molecules of the original substance to remain.

What is the historical context of homeopathy?

Homeopathy was created by German physician Samuel Hahnemann in the late 18th century. He developed the practice after translating medical texts and experimenting on himself with cinchona bark, which contains quinine.

What is the ‘law of similars’ in homeopathy?

The ‘law of similars’ is the principle that a substance that causes symptoms in a healthy person can cure those same symptoms in a sick person. This is the foundation of homeopathic practice.

What is the significance of the Nuremberg Salt Test?

The Nuremberg Salt Test of 1835 was the first ever randomized double-blind study. It was designed to disprove homeopathy but had methodological issues. Hahnemann dismissed the results, arguing that group testing was not effective for homeopathy.

What is the ‘water memory’ theory in homeopathy?

The ‘water memory’ theory suggests that water retains a memory of the properties of a medicinal ingredient through the process of succussion. This theory is not supported by scientific evidence and is considered pseudoscientific.

What are the potential dangers of relying on homeopathy?

Relying on homeopathy can be dangerous because it may delay seeking effective medical treatment for serious conditions. People who believe in homeopathy may initially use it for minor ailments but later rely on it for more serious issues, leading to delayed treatment and worse outcomes.

What is the placebo effect in relation to homeopathy?

The placebo effect is a well-documented phenomenon where patients feel better after receiving a treatment that has no active ingredient. Homeopathy relies heavily on the placebo effect, as the remedies are often just water or sugar pills with no actual medicinal value.

Sources

• Original Decoding the Unknown video: Homeopathy: Is there Anything To It?
• Hero image source by anogh / openverse, cc0.