A lot of quacks are out there calling themselves homeopathic practitioners and help to give homeopathy a bad name. It gets confused with holistic and is often not used correctly. I’ve seen what it can do and, in the right hands, it’s powerful.
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He is not “close-minded” and he does understand it.
If he understands it, please ask him to explain it to me because I don’t! I don’t know of anyone else who claims to, either, so he must be special, indeed!
There’s nothing special about it. He understands it because he understands science and medicine. He understands that homeopathy runs directly counter to both. He understands that homeopathy is baloney.
You’re going to have to do better than that around here. “I saw it somewhere” doesn’t cut it. We’ve had enough of that in both of the threads about this column, and nobody has been able to back up their claims so far. I won’t hold my breath waiting for you to do so.
Then you don’t understand either science or the claims of homeopathy. They are not compatible with each other.
First, the “law of similars” is completely bogus. There are things we don’t yet understand about the body, but we know enough to see that this is not true.
Second, and more important, the “law of infinitessimals” violates basic science and logic. It maintains that water molecules can remember being in contact with a couple of other molecules for a short period, and somehow translate this to healing your body’s chemical engine. We definitely understand basic chemistry to a very large extent, and a molecule doesn’t remember its former neighbors. And on top of that, if it were true, what would keep it from remembering all the things it had come into contact with previously which would make you sicker? The only difference is the intention of the people giving and taking the “remedy”, and now you’re into the Dionne Warwick realm.
I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating: If the law of infinitessimals is true, what keeps the water from “remembering” its past or present containers?
The comments on this thread seem to center on “what is science?” and “what is homeopathy?” And many posters seem to deny that homeopathy can be science. I don’t agree.
Science is, first of all, observation of phenomena previously unobserved or unnoted; second, arriving at a theory to explain the phenomena; and finally, designing and carrying out experiments to test the theory.
The “law of similars” was named such by Samuel Hahnemann, the man who named and developed homeopathy. If one reads Hahnemann’s work and reads about Hahnemann, it is clear that he was, above all, a scientist, using the above definition. The law of similars was the result of his trial-and-error efforts to actually cure people of disease.
He started out to do something far different from what he ended up doing. At every step along the way, it was his precise and detailed observations of himself, his patients, and his “provers,” (people who took various substances to determine their effects), that determined his development of theory. And it was his subsequent observations that caused him to refine and modify his theory throughout his life.
Many subsequent homeopaths came to the field after they themselves, a family member, or a patient failed to be healed by conventional means and were subsequently cured by homeopathy. The stories of many early homeopaths can be found in a new book on homeopathy’s history by Julian Winston, “The Faces of Homeopathy,” published by Great Auk Publishing in New Zealand. The author can be e-mailed at inston@actrix.gen.nz
Like Hahnemann, many of these were people who had started out as something else, usually conventional medical doctors, and their close observations led them to conclude that homeopathy offered a more effective system of treatment than the currently accepted modalities. In a word, they saw that it worked–people got well. These doctors often had to retrain and to accept reduced incomes in order to become homeopaths. The claim that people practice homeopathy as a way to get rich is silly. Homeopathy is very time consuming, and the remedies themselves are inexpensive. Homeopathy has always been primarily a labor of love and a matter of “right livelihood,” practiced, in the main, by people who are genuinely interested in curing people. It is anything but a get-rich-quick scheme.
No real scientific discovery eliminates the validity of previous truth. Newtonian physics was not invalidated by relativity. We will not have to throw away “science” or “modern medicine” to accept the scientific underpinnings of homeopathy once they are established, any more than we had to throw away the law of gravity in order to acknowledge that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were profoundly affected by the activity of particles that no one could see.
I find homeopathy fascinating PRECISELY BECAUSE the questions that are raised by the FACT that it works are the most interesting questions I know about at this time. “How can it be that such a small quantity of a substance can have such profound effects?”
I attended a lecture recently by Vittorio Elia,Ph.D., Professor of Physical Chemistry at the University of Naples, and author of many scientific articles in international journals in the field of the thermodynamics of aqueous solutions. He has done over 3000 experiments on highly diluted aqueous solutions of common compounds using a microcalorimeter. His studies show that the exothermic heat of mixing is higher in succussed solutions than it is in non-succussed solutions of the same substance. Moreover, this excess heat is retained and measurable when the solution is distilled, so that there is no question that “not one molecule remains.” In other words,it appears that the water does “remember” its former neighbors–and remember forever!
Dr. Elia is not willing to draw conclusions from his research at this time, except to say that some properties of homeopathically prepared aqueous solutions appear to be very different from the properties of ordinary aqueous solutions. The homeopathically prepared water can be subsequently boiled and distilled without changing the new properties. Dr. Elia continues to pursue this line of inquiry. Interested scientists can no doubt find and read his papers and ponder their meaning, attempt to duplicate his results, and design additional experiments.
Another scientist, by the name of S.Y. Lo, has done research supporting the idea that succussed solutions have different properties from non-succussed solutions. Lo was working to develop a fuel efficient automobile carburetor, and found that succussion enhanced chemical reactions in the manufacture of gasoline.
So hard science to learn how homeopathy works–and hard science that may incidentally explain how homeopathy works–is under way. There may be nothing definitive yet, but the early evidence is interesting, perhaps astounding. There are also some double-blind studies of homeopathic remedies versus placebo.
People complaining about the lack of studies should remember that studies cost money and there is no financial incentive to do such studies because homeopathic remedies are not patented. In order to get research subjects, one would have to find sick people willing to take a 50% chance that their condition will receive NO treatment, and doctors willing to put their sick patients in the situation of possibly receiving no treatment when a treatment is available. Nonetheless, I believe we will see more double-blind studies in the next few years.
Unlike many of the people who have responded to this thread with no experience of actually using homeopathy, I KNOW how profound the effects of infinitesimally diluted remedies are because I have experienced not only their healing effects but also their deleterious effects–when I have taken the wrong remedy or too much of the right remedy. I have NO QUESTION that these remedies are powerful. I want to know WHY they are so powerful PRECISELY BECAUSE of my interest in science and in understanding the universe more completely.
When something works but “doesn’t make sense,” that’s where science BEGINS. That’s where the excitement of “WHY?” and the pursuit of knowledge, starts. If homeopathy didn’t work, hundreds of intelligent homeopaths would have sought modalities that DID work, and I would pursue other areas of interest.
There is a large body of theory as to how homeopathy works --not in terms of physical chemistry but in terms of its effect on human beings–available in books written over a period of 200 years. These books are science by the above definition, but may not agree with the way mainstream 20th century American medicine views people and treats most disease. In order to decide what one thinks about homeopathic theory, one should read in the original (or good translations) the best thinkers in the field. In addition to Hahnemann’s classic “Organon” (6th edition) and “Chronic Diseases,” my favorites are George Vithoulkas’s “The Science of Homeopathy” (Grove Press, 1980), and J.T. Kent’s “Lectures on Homeopathic Philosophy.” Kent and Hahnemann wrote before the advent of antibiotics. Vithoulkas is still alive. Compton Burnett, an astute observer who wrote at the turn of the century, is also well worth reading, particularly on the subject of vaccination. A large selection of books on homeopathy is available through Minimum Price Books, many of them in inexpensive editions from India.
When I studied chemistry and biochemistry in college, my teachers, who were smart, honest people and excellent teachers, often answered my questions by saying “I don’t know,” or “No one knows the answer to that.” It seems to me that this is a better position from which to approach new observations or new information than “It can’t be,” or “The people who are saying that happened to them are deluded.” “We don’t know” acknowledges the mystery and vastness of the world in which we live and the limitations of the human perspective. “We don’t know yet” allows for the possibility of learning.
I’m sorry I came to this thread after the “good” homeopathy thread was closed. Maybe it will be possible to lift the level of discourse here. If anyone wants to pursue “What is homeopathy?” in more detail please let me know.
P.S. According to Dr. Elia, the reason water doesn’t “remember” its previous containers is that the previous containers are not in ionic form, i.e. not in solution. Apparently, it’s the attractive power of the ions of the solute that causes the water molecules to “line up” in particular patterns, after which succussion–or shaking and banging–breaks the patterns apart in a non-random way (something like crystals). A forthcoming book by Bill Gray, M.D. will have more about this.
Ok, just because I know that there’s a lot of rotweillers in here just waiting to pounce on anyone who even so much as appears to be speaking in favor of homeopathy, may I suggest, before anyone else replies to this, that we keep the replies slow enough that Marlene (or another defender of homeopathy) has a reasonable chance to reply to them, rather than being scared off of the board? A rapid succession of, say, 20 replies might very well be intimidating. Not, of course, that I’m implying that this or any other thread ever scared anyone off.
Just to let you know, I did a Beilstein Abstracts search on “Elia” and “homeopathic” and came up with no matching records. I did a search on “Elia, Vittorio” and found 42 matching abstracts back to 1980 (the time limit on the free Beilstein service), none of which gave a hint of anything you gave him “credit” for. I may have missed something-The free Beilstein service sometimes gives me fits, but who knows. Let’s just say I’m very unconvinced by this line of argument…
As for Lo, you left out a bit of the story. As far as I know, he knew little if anything about homeopathy until a few years ago when his company (with which he served as director of R&D) was caught up in scandal with the Co$ over Laundry Balls. Basically his company is a big den of fraud. From what I can tell, he found out that his pet theory (that violates the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics) was being used by homeopaths to explain their faith and now he is riding on that bandwagon. His original research had nothing to do with anything except for running current through distilled water which was then froze. The “fuel efficient automobile carburetor” is a fabrication as far as I can tell. Once again, color me unconvinced by your “science”.
American Technologies Group: What Are They Up To?
This, in my opinion, reveals the fact that either you are trying to deceive the readers of this forum, or else you do not have much of an “deeper understanding” of the issues involved. First off-the no financial incentives bit is not really true. You have been sold that line of reasoning by those that are making excuses for not doing quality research. As for the research subjects issue: Big, hairy deal. Double blinded studies are done daily in nearly every city in this nation, there doesn’t seem to be a problem. The funny thing is that most homeopathic remedies I see are for self-limiting disorders where there is no harm when the patient gets placebo, therefore there should be little ethical problems. As for seeing more double blinded studies in the future, we have seen plenty already, and they are overwhelmingly disappointing for homeopathy.
Once again, I will state that homeopathy has nothing to do with science. The “laws” of homeopathy are little more than tenets of the “Faith of Homeopathy”. Hahnemann did little more than extrapolate wildly from a single data point and out of that grew the “Faith of Homeopathy”. Much like “Creation Science”, there is little accepted “science” unless it agrees with the tenets of the faith, otherwise, it must be flawed in some way.
Jon
I have little or no knowledge of Homeopathy, so I don’t really have an opinion. But jkeller states:
Do you have some cites for that? I am not questioning you, just wondering. To quote David B.
Again, I don’t know enough to have an opinion, but I would like to see cites.
Thanks.
So, was that PUNdit or Sue posting the above? With both of you using the same name to post lately, it gets a bit confusing.
Because Sue should know that homeopathy is completely worthless, except as a placebo. I don’t know what PUNdit’s background is.
However, in answer to your question, here is a quote from
“Homeopathy: The Ultimate Fake” by Dr. Stephen Barrett, and available in full at http://www.quackwatch.com/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/homeo.html
In response to Marlene, she has confused science with anecdotes. Hahnemann did work on trial and error, but did so in a rather unscientific manner. He tried things out and made broad assumptions from that. His work has not held up to scientific scrutiny and is certainly not a “FACT,” as you have claimed.
There are many more things I could say, but, frankly, most of them have been said already in this thread or the other one on this same topic. Marlene has not presented us with anything new. To wit, she has not given us the scientific evidence we have asked for. She claims some evidence based on one guy’s tests, but gives no specific reference, nor any references to anybody who has duplicated his findings.
But we do see Marlene following in the standard fashion of saying that she knows the work because she’s taken them. It makes me wonder if she’s read anything in this thread or the other one. I’m sorry, Marlene, but an anecdotal account of you having felt the effects is essentially meaningless. And to accuse the rest of us of not understanding just because we haven’t used it is simply horrible science.
Ok, I’ll put in my fifth of a dime, now. First of all, in her first post, Marlene states, in reference to research done by Dr. Vittorio Elia:
If true, this would violate the law of conservation of energy. In her second post, she states:
Water that’s been through the water cycle a few times (and after more than 4 billion years, it’s safe to say that most water has been through the cycle) has had a great number of things dissolved in it, including salt and urea, for starters. What are the homeopathic properties of urea?
I do agree with Marlene that questioning previously established laws is necessary for the advancement of science. However, if the law that you’re questioning is as well established as the law of Conservation of Energy, you’d darn well better have some pretty strong evidence.
My understanding is that Lo has no interest in homeopathy even now. Where did you get the “bandwagon?”
Many conditions for which homeopathy is and has been used are anything but self-limiting: smallpox and cholera epidemics, uterine prolapse, cystocele, asthma, serious mental illness (numerous large 19th century mental hospitals were built and operated as homeopathic institutions), tuberculosis, tumors.
The low-potency combination remedies available in health food stores are not considered homeopathy by “classical” homeopaths, since it is impossible to tell which of the several ingredients is having the effect (if any), and in order to gauge whether a remedy is the right one, as much as possible other reasons for recovery (or exacerbation) have to be eliminated. Prior to my study of classical homeopathy, however, I had very good success with these remedies. I took a hay fever remedy, thinking I would have to continue with it the way I would with, say, an antihistamine, and my allergies disappeared–this was 20 years ago. I gave it to my completely disbelieving brother, who is an orthopedic surgeon (i.e., an allopath) but was at my house suffering from allergies with no drugstore nearby, and it worked so well I ended up having to send it to him when he went back East and couldn’t find it. Same story with other family members. Why did it eliminate my allergies permanently and not my brother’s? Possibly because he drinks a lot of coffee and I drink none. Coffee is known to antidote homeopathic remedies (as does camphor).
Classical homeopaths view combination remedies as suppressive and therefore “allopathic,” since they can eliminate symptoms without curing the underlying condition. Symptoms are viewed as the body’s efforts to heal itself, which should be supported, rather than thwarted.
I asked some sellers of combination remedies why they came to a recent conference of classical homeopaths, and they said that the low-potency combinations do work, and they serve to introduce people to homeopathy. Then some people pursue it further and some don’t.
The 30c single-ingredient remedies available over the counter are considered “the lowest of the high potencies” and should be used with great care–typically take the remedy once (5 to 10 pellets depending on size) and see what happens. Different remedies have different periods of duration, ranging from 7 days to (more typically) 40-60 days. Overdoing (or in the case of sensitive people, even taking a “normal” dose) can cause a “proving,” where you get the symptoms caused by the substance. That has happened to me once through ignorance (among other things I developed photophobia and could barely stand to be outdoors, even with sunglasses, though I hadn’t worn sunglasses for many years) and several times through misprescribing. In all cases I was able to antidote the remedy, sometimes after waiting a week or two, and the symptoms went away quickly. So it was pretty clear they were not caused by some outside influence.
I have done all my own prescribing, something I would not recommend to others. Find an experienced, established homeopath, particularly if the illness is NOT self-limiting.
No good homeopath would say that the higher the potency the more effective the remedy. Rather they would say that the potency should be chosen based on the vitality and sensitivity of the patient, and the characteristics of the disease, doing what is most likely to promote cure and least likely to produce a severe aggravation. It’s not always easy to gauge. There are, by the way, potencies higher than the “C” potencies. They are not available in health food stores.
To repeat what I said above: Marlene has not presented us with anything new.
Marlene,
Bandwagon may have been a bit of overexaggeration, however he has been involved with Dr. Benjamin Bonavida in relation to IE crystals and homeopathy and he has co-chaired at least one conference that focused on the biological activity of IE crystals. Still, this is a small point-the real point is that this “science” that you put forth is unconvincing and there is a good chance that it was fabricated to sell “the Force”, an air filter fitting that adds a “fuel additive” (i.e. the IE crystals) to the engine, and those wonderfully fraudulent laundry balls. In addition, I have seen nothing from Vittorio Elia that has been published concerning homeopathy in the chemical literature, therefore it is highly unlikely that anyone would be able to reproduce his work, or even evaluate it, for that matter.
Let’s face it Marlene, Homeopathy has been around long enough in order for the practitioners to have found some physical property, anything, that would set apart remedies from distilled and/or tap water-Unfortunately, this evidence has not been forthcoming and most likely will not be forthcoming. This has led homeopaths to latch on to any load of bull that may validate the “Faith of Homeopathy”.
As for the balance of your letter, who cares what it is or has been used for or if the ailments are self-limiting or more serious, that wasn’t the crux of my argument. It doesn’t matter unless a large body of peer reviewed work can objectively show that homeopathy works reproducibly or else someone can give a good, scientifically grounded explanation as to why it might work. Homeopathy has had nearly two centuries to come up with good evidence and has failed to do so, when can we say this dead horse has had enough licks? Therefore, in case anyone hasn’t been paying attention, the debate here has nothing to do with what should be prescribed by whom and for what ailments and which homeopathic remedies are high or low potencies and which are more effective. No, this thread has miles to go before we can get to that point. The debate over homeopathy has yet to get past the question of what evidence is there that homeopathy should even be considered as a viable healing method? With respect to basic physical differences between homeopathic water and distilled water, on the two homeopathy threads we have been given references to shady scientists, references that are apparently non-existent and scientific proclamations that are out and out lies. (And this doesn’t even include Marlene’s contribution. Her main thing seems to be ignoring the main issues brought up by those that have honest difficulty accepting her assertions.)
As for PUNdit, here is another good overview to chew on:
http://www.phys.hawaii.edu/vjs/www/med/homeop.html
Jon
Relating to Marlene’s contention that homeopathy is not inconsistent with established scientific principles, the hawaii.edu site has this quote:
I would add only that the implications of homeopathy’s “law of infinitessimals” also violate basic logic.
Here is the reference for Dr. Elia’s work:
Elia, V.,& Niccoli, M., (1999) Thermodynamics of extremely
diluted aqueous solutions. Annals NY Acad. Sci. 879, 241-248.
David B said:
Hey David, can you prove that accusation? What evidence do you have it was Sue and not PUNdit that made that post. Are you just assuming that since this is a medical-related post that only Sue would be interested?
I know PUNdit posted in the thread on bloodletting, with much input from Sue. I know the accusation was made that it was Sue and not PUNdit posting. Can you back that up? Or are you just throwing in that comment because you didn’t like it when PUNdit asked you for a cite? You realize that does nothing to further your argument.
Marlene said:
What about homeopathic coffee? Maybe that would give him his caffeine fix without counteracting the other “remedies”.
I think homeopathic coffee is made of a tablespoon of ground chicory root plus half a microgram of valium. Make sure you don’t get the valium does too low, or you’ll have trouble sleeping in the night due to the jitters.
It’s online at Thermodynamics of extremely diluted solutions.. I am not qualified to evaluate it.