By Richard Kaplan
In the late 1700s, Samuel Hahnemann invented homeopathy, a system of medicine which is reputed to be very effective for treating ailments in hobbits, elves, dwarves and other creatures of Middle Earth. Unfortunately, despite centuries of practise, this “healing modality” does not work for humans.
While this may seem surprising, the reason for this is quite clear when considering that the modern-day homeopathic materia medica reads like a witches’ recipe book. It contains potions concocted from a wide variety of substances, ranging from the narcotic to the poisonous and the plainly bizarre.
Examples include: Latrodectus Mactans made from whole black widow spiders; Tuberculinum Bovinum from the pus of a cow’s tubercular abscess; Nux Vomica from the highly poisonous seeds of the strychnine tree and Magnetis Polus Australis made from the south pole of the magnet. Apparently Magnetis Polus Australis is an excellent treatment for ingrown toenails.
While the choice of medication itself is quaintly 19th century, its method of preparation is equally nonsensical. Hahnemann, obviously aware of the toxic nature of many of his remedies, proposed that they should be used as dilutions and came up with the strange notions of “potentisation” and “succussion”.
This process of “potentisation” entails a system of serial dilutions until there is no possible active ingredient left, with each dilution followed by a vigorous shake, the “succussion”. For this purpose, Hahnemann used a test-tube which he thumped against a heavy, leather-bound Bible.
This supposedly enabled the active ingredient to imprint itself on the substrate which is usually water. Apparently, the trick was in the thump. Hahnemann believed that this process activated the “vital energy” of the diluted substance and lo, he called these flavoured holy waters, remedies.
Now, this nonsense should long ago have been relegated to the rubbish heap of superstitious, infantile thinking but surprisingly it has not. In fact, vast amounts of time and money have been spent training homeopathic practitioners, making and selling homeopathic remedies and even researching the effect of this treatment.
In 2005, Shang et al published a comparative analysis of conventional and homeopathic placebo controlled trials in The Lancet*. This study, which included 110 homeopathic clinical trails, concluded that “there was weak evidence for a specific effect of homeopathic remedies, but strong evidence for specific effects of conventional interventions”.
The authors went on further to explain that: “This finding is compatible with the notion that the clinical effects of homeopathy are placebo effects.” This result is not surprising but what is astounding is that these trials were done in the first place. Next, we will be researching whether fairy dust can enable flight in humans or if garlic actually does repel vampires.
But the homeopaths are undeterred. The South African Faculty of Homeopathy offers a post-graduate diploma course in homeopathy for medical doctors and the Homeopathic Association of South Africa lists more than 190 practitioners on its website*. And while every goblin, elf and dwarf may rejoice that humans have taken the trouble to complete the DFHom.SA diploma in order to treat the inhabitants of Middle Earth, considering the paucity of hobbit shires in South Africa and the number of registered homeopaths, we can only be left with a sneaking suspicion that these “doctors” are also surreptitiously treating humans.
But why would humans take hobbit medicine? The answer to this question is complex and must wait until another time. However it should be noted that homeopathy is an ideal practice for hypochondriacs. It is preoccupied with the details of symptoms, with the nature, consistency and colour of secretions, with snoring patterns, moods, fleeting pains and multiple obscure symptoms. And so, the homeopaths and their hypochondriacal patients can keep each other busy indefinitely, curing imaginary ailments with imaginary medicines.
*Shang A, Huwiler-Müntener K, Nartey L, Jüni P, Dörig S, Sterne JA, Pewsner D, Egger M. Are the clinical effects of homoeopathy placebo effects? Comparative study of placebo-controlled trials of homoeopathy and allopathy. Lancet (2005) Aug 27-Sep 2;366(9487):726-32.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16125589
*Homeopathic Association of South Africa: http://www.hsa.org.za
Richard Kaplan is a medical doctor working in the field of HIV/Aids. He has developed a strong strain of resistance, bordering on antipathy, to politicians and poseurs, whatever their hue.
Wonderful.
Now just replace all the words related to ‘Homeopathy’ with ‘Traditional medicine’. Same thing, different storm brewing.
Oddly enough this is the basis of modern medicine. Have you ever looked at the origin of your alopathic remedies? Strangely they are all concotions from plants.
Weird isn’t it?
This is a big pharmalogical company battle against natural products and homeopathy knows that sometines alopathy works better.
It’s also my experience, if my doctors of both kinds,were as instinctive as I am with animals, I would not have spent so much on both types of healing. Wrong choices of healers on my part!
Some of us have weird skills and these include doctors of all types!
Do not criticise what you cannot understand and this goes for all medicine.
Two blogs in a row on almost the same subject with the same “scientific outcome” against the homeopathic practisioners.
Coincidence? Or is this the beginning of a frontal attack by the chemical medical industry on a range of alternative practices such as SCIO (based on Reife), homeopathic, Reikhi and last but not least the African Sangoma.
The chemical medical industry is worth a large annual sum of money (must check if spelled in trillions of dollars or billions). The homeopathic industry seems to be growing.
The almost simultaneous appearance of these two blog, make me think that one party is worried about market share. This could be a signal that the public finds more joy in the softer world of homeopathic treatment than the canon fire of the chemical treatment.
did they not use to say the same thing about acupuncture.
Hypochondria is a disease (there I said it)- of the mind but still a disease.Perhaps not in your DSM classification but many people suffer from it.so you acknowledge it works for these people.
I lived my youth under the spell of so called witchdoctors and sangomas and whole villages belive in it. I wont go into christianity islam hindi to demonstrate crazy notions.
Do you really trust “scientific” methods after the fixed results of global warming which torpedoed copenhagen.
It could be argued you are like a trade union trying to protect your turf against oldcomers called homeopaths.
Its like polygamy- let those who believe in it do it in peace. its their own money and frankly what business is it of yours
Thank you for a most refreshing take on this exasperating issue.
I wouldnt just throw the whole idea of homeopathy out the door, as junk.
We have to keep in mind, that before we had modern medicine as we know it, many of these remedies were actually used with success.
Inventors of modern medicine want to claim all the glory, but most of the modern medicines were copied from medicines used by much older generations, whose methods would also be called witches brews and concoctions, but were in fact the for-runners of modern medicine.
Alternative medicine threatens the pharmaceutical industy, so vested interests have to fight it with the same non-science vested interests counter global warming etc.
It is indeed no different to countless traditional remedies that are dispensed around the world coupled with the throwing of bones and incanatations and eventually one realises it is also deeply related to the ‘religious feeling’ inhumans.
Agains all reason and proof to the contrary the irrationality of humans breaks through and believes in magic and miracles and that could be the appearance of the Virgin Mary in a piece of toast or indeed the ‘percussed’ essence of batwing and leg of toad.
The good thing about homeopathy is of course that it cannot affect the ‘patient’; the bad thing is it cannot cure anything that is not of irrational imaginings.
One should remember that the majority of people are uneducated, unable to use reason and logic, unfit to live in the 21st century and as such should not even get the vote never mind be allowed to breed!
Gosh, I’m getting a bit hot under the collar so I better stop…..
An unfortunate commentary by a typically arrogant know-it-all allopathic doctor. I am not a homeopath. I have been in the pharma industry for many years and had a doctor father who realised that traditional medicine wasnt the be-all and end- all and that he didnt hold the only means of treating and curing patients. I have seen how alternative medicine eg accupuncture, homeopathy, chiropractory can assist patients call it placebo effect or whatever. The patient gets better without any harm being done to him its this what is supposed to happen. Can we say the same for conventional and allopathic medicine choices
Amen doc.Nuff said.
Well put. I recommend Ben Goldacre’s site http://www.badscience.net or his book Bad Science for more on homeopathy and other quackery.
http://timesonline.typepad.com/science/2010/01/homeopathy-by-the-mindboggling-numbers.html
Read that for some numbers….
“Do you really trust “scientific” methods after the fixed results of global warming which torpedoed Copenhagen.”
??
Either you trust in science and the scientific method, or you don’t. If you don’t, stop being hypocritical and refrain from using the advances that science has brought into our lives. Computers, cars, medicine, the wheel and fire…..
You must accept that sometimes science will yield results that may be unpleasant to your thoughts and believes – discounting a result because you don’t like its implications is unwise.
No evidence. Simple as that.
If an ‘allopathic’ doctor (for allopathic, read ‘real’) uses a treatment for which there is no evidence and there is an adverse outcome he’ll get sued and lose his licence to practice.
If homeopaths or traditional healers were similarly accountable there’d be far fewer people willing to chance their arm at it.
Not to mention the almost age-old antagonism between medical doctors and homeopathic doctors. Medical doctors learn a messianic arrogance as part of their degree and are conditioned to hiss at homeopathy and chriropractics.
Homeopathic science in the 1700′s was nothing like it has developed to today. A comparison with medical science of the 1700′s would leave us equally disenchanted with medical doctors.
Coming from a doctor, we too are conditioned to just trust. No thank you.
There is a difference between herbal and homeopathic.
Homeopathy might be rubbish, but the fact that HERBAL medicine can have its uses is proven by the fact that many modern medicines rely on ingredients from botanical sources.
And herbal medicine can be as harmful as any Western medicine if used incorrectly.
Ok, so ppl are defending this pseudo nonsense.
So -why dont we let the chiropractors/sangomas/homeopaths/reiki/faithhealers fight it out amongst themselves for a while? I mean, they all completely contradict each other. You guys duke it out, the winner gets to try its hand at producing the same volume and quality of evidence demanded of science based medicine.
In the meantime, the rest of the world will just comcentrate on finding real answers to real problems and hopefully getting better.
On the one hand “scientific” doctors continue to prescribe a derivative of willow bark (aspirin), whose workings were unknown until the 1960′s.
On the other hand, there are dozens of support groups for those affected by ailments from mental illness to genetic disorders mainly because their doctors treat their “soma” (bodies) without considering the patient (or family – the effect on a family of, say a retarded child – can be devastating)
The same Lancet which published the paper by Shang et al in 2005, has just published a paper “Biological, clinical, and ethical advances of placebo effects” by Dr Damien G Finniss MSc [Med], Ted J Kaptchuk, Franklin Miller PhD, Prof Fabrizio Benedetti MD ["real" doctors] whose abstract reads: “For many years, placebos have been defined by their inert content and their use as controls in clinical trials and treatments in clinical practice. Recent research shows that placebo effects are genuine psychobiological events attributable to the overall therapeutic context, and that these effects can be robust in both laboratory and clinical settings. There is also evidence that placebo effects can exist in clinical practice, even if no placebo is given. Further promotion and integration of laboratory and clinical research will allow advances in the ethical use of placebo mechanisms that are inherent in routine clinical care, and encourage the use of treatments that stimulate placebo effects.” – http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(09)61706-2/abstract
Perhaps Dr Kaplan needs some mind-opening medicine?
The idea of water being ‘imprinted’ is fascinating, with all the tap water we get having a faecal imprint.. need I go on? I don’t drink it anyway, hope its okay for showering!
I hate that people refer to homeopaths as doctors. They are not doctors that requires much more education and hard work.
I am tempted to call them snake oil salesmen but they actually believe in the crap (and often water) that they sell.
As an anthropologist I am all for acknowledging traditional medicine as efficacious with certain cures, but it often relies on the pharmacology of plants and not uber-dilution.
Here is a brilliant comedy spoof on the subject of
homeopathy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMGIbOGu8q0
Maybe we can get the guys at the Large Hadron Collider to accelerate some plain and some imprinted water molecules and see if they behave differently?
Sure they can find some time in between solving the mysteries of the universe.
The bottom line is – does homeopathy delvier the results in double blind clinical trials ie, if it is tested under controlled circumstances, are the results predictable and positive? The answer is a resoundng NO. Does homeopathy ‘work’? The answer is yes – but by means of the placebo effect. And so, I say, let those who want to use it, do so, but let them pay for it accordingly – dont lets support this so-called medicine industry with people’s tax money or contributions to medical aid.
Yes – Homeopathy is hogwash. So is modern mainstream medicine. “Cures” for cancer are often the killer of patients, and you’d be hard pressed to find two orthodontists agreeing on how to fix an overbite, nevermind finding two specialists agreeing on issues like HIV/Aids – scientific method or no scientific method).
Doctors are the fourth-highest cause of death in the USA after heart disease, smoking and auto accidents (I’ll look this up and post the source).
Add to that the constant lobbying of big pharma, (insert conspiracy theory du jour here), and you can’t help but get the sense that mainstream medicine is every bit as much snake oil as any given homeopath.
I have serious concerns about the denigrating comments made about Big Pharma in this Comments section. I have no doubt whatsoever that:
1. The Pharmaceutical Industry has nothing whatsoever to do with this nasty campaign against homeopathy.
2. The Pharmaceutical Industry has always put its innate love of humanity and altruism above the interests of its shareholders and owners – unlike the thieving homeopaths and other practitioners of ‘alternative’ medicine.
Dr Kaplan’s main point also has been treated with disrespect here. Human beings need protection from their own innate stupidity.
1.THE STATE must not allow people to do stupid things like taking homeopathy for their health.
2.Not only should homeopathy be banned in South Africa but so should all religions and ‘spiritual practices’ which are just as hocus pocus as homeopathy.
3.SCIENTISM* RULES! All opposition to Scientism must be culled immediately. Now where did we here this sort of thing before?
Scientism:The term scientism is used to describe the view that natural science has authority over all other interpretations of life, such as philosophical, religious, mythical, spiritual, or humanistic explanations, and over other fields of inquiry, such as the social sciences. The term is used by social scientists like Hayek[1] or Karl Popper to describe what they see as the underlying attitudes and beliefs common to many scientists.
Imagine you had a choice of two airlines: “Western” and “Alt”.
The service on “Western” was often crappy, the staff sometimes rude, and – despite a rigorous program of testing their planes – every now and then you read of one crashing into the sea.
The “Alt” airlines staff are much more friendly, but there is no systematic program of testing their planes (they say they just KNOW – from experience and some kind of primary knowledge that they’re OK), and you never hear about crashes, because they’re never investigatied or published.
Which would you choose?
So the god in white fears diluted water, plant extractions etc., As to why people are doing this ? Well the answers ” are complex and will have to wait till another time” . He is amazed that “studies have been undertaken at all” and cynically concludes “.. the homeopaths and their hypochondriacal patients can keep each other busy indefinitely, curing imaginary ailments with imaginary medicines.”
Indeed, the most compassionate dear doctor has chosen well to treat and research AIDS patients. The statistics and research in that area seems to be a jungle of contradictions, a playing field with an abundance of money, glamour and helpless subjects galore to experiment and play around with, and big big bucks waiting for those who invent the Aspirin against AIDS.
I also agree with Gerry and ibelieveindog.
What is science and what is not? I was once told that all is science once the human conscious has grasped its workings… The first caveman who started fire was surely a witch to his peers, remember flat earth vs spherical?
Lets then try not to be the sole proprietors of science because it my just be that we do not have the knowledge today to explain the phenomenon in our scientific dogma.
Scientism is as much a religion and faith as any organised religion.
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
Hamlet Act 1, scene 5
The Bard may be dead for half a century, but it still applies…
Who knows what homeopathy and chemistry will bring to us next?
@ Lauren and many others here: I have just read a fascinating (and thoroughly referenced) book by a Brit psychiatrist delving into the efficacy of anti-depressants – and concluding that the evidence provided by research in the public dopmain (and research which he had to invoke the Freedom of Information act to access) shows that they work mostly through the placebo effect. Any honest medical scientist will tell you that the same goes for many another drug that has been tested and put on the market.
Outside the theatre, beyond the scalpel, much of what we call healing is actually using the power of suggestion. Homeopaths and others whom doctors rubbish are pretty good at that; they LISTEN to you and make you feel confidence in their ability to help – unlike the GP in his flurried seven minutes, when he doesn’t even lay a hand on you.
Maybe there’s something we cannot yet pin down in the process of creating remedies, but even if they are nothing but liquid (shaken, not stirred), I will gladly take something that arouses my body’s own defences – as opposed to the dangerous drugs so readily prescribed by every second GP.
And as for those of you who enjoy laughing about hypochondriacs, I wish on you a very painful and debilitating condition that no doctor can diganose or cure. The insult of the hypochondriac label is hard to bear on top of real pain – I curse you to feel it!
Hobbit medicine? As an early explorer of my fellow philologist’s Middle Earth, I am reasonably familiar with the canon. So far as I can recall without a new search, Middle Earth medical practice [most of not all practitioners are human] as documented is mostly herbal, and it is not specified whether the guiding principles are homeopathic, allopathic, or other. Certainly there is no trace of Hahnemann’s search for the simillimum nor of the dilution typical of homeopathic remedies.
Doctor Kaplan is of course entitled and encouraged to speak from his training and experience, and to rely on mainstream research, and I would not pester him with unproductive argument.
But his opening is incorrect and uncalled for. Unless he can document the claim that homeopathy works for hobbits, elves, and the like?