It’s also not as crazy as it sounds, at least at its founding. Homeopathy was originally developed at the very tail end of the 18th century as an alternative to conventional medicine, which was extremely crude and often caused more harm than good. At the time, you probably were safer seeking a homeopathic remedy than a medical doctor.
The problem is that medicine has advanced significantly in the 230 years since then, while homeopathy hasn’t really changed at all. It’s difficult (impossible really) to improve on a system that’s fully reliant on faith, subjectivity, and untestable results. Anyone who thinks that treatments dating to the time of the founding fathers of the US should be applied today are ignorant to the point of being a danger to themselves and others.
And yet I encountered a fully trained and licensed veterinarian who’d gone over to the homeopathy dark side; it was she who introduced me to the miraculous powers of succussion. I did have her give acupuncture to my horse once but entrusted his regular veterinary care to conventional vets. Despite my betrayal of the homeopathic faith, that horse did live to be 30.
I was injected with methylene blue when I had my boob job (okay, partial mastectomy in 2017 for breast cancer) because it makes a beeline for sentinel lymph nodes, and back in the day, it was used as a urinary antiseptic for UTIs in the pre-antibiotic era. My left chest was green for a few days afterwards, although my urine wasn’t (I was told to watch for this, and not be too freaked out).
Wiki says In homeopathy, succussion is the vigorous shaking of a diluted substance against an elastic surface, a process believed to “potentiate” or increase the curative “information” of the remedy. This concept, known as dynamization claims that simply diluting a substance is not enough; the agitation is necessary to unlock its medicinal power.
He discovered this because medicine transported by horse got shaken more and proved to be more potent.
Shaking (“succussing”) the homeopathic solution is important so that you can fool the body into thinking that it’s working. The good folks at the Weston Price Foundation have explained it.
Remember also that your body can play tricks on you, making symptoms worse after taking homeopathic remedies. That’s where aggravation and provings come into play. Feeling lousier is actually a sign that homeopathic drugs are working, in much the same way as other alt med treatments. You’re not getting sicker, it’s just the toxins coming out.
Still confused? Take a course in quantum theory, which explains why homeopathy defies physics - “thus providing the homeopath with a firm grounding in the practice of rational medicine.”
It’s highly relevant. The odd appearance of Trump’s left hand is likely due to his taking homeopathic fluoric acidum to ccounteract venous abnormalities and symptoms of aging.
Fluoric acidum is also recommended for “inability to realize responsibility…sour eructations…flatus…offensive perspiration…”
It’s debatable whether the infusions are working. A higher dilution might be just the ticket.
Homeopathic remedies only work via the placebo effect; which isn’t nothing, but not enough to be significant. It’s literally the power of positive thinking.
And they can certainly be harmful, because they sometimes are applied via methods that can be harmful, or include an ingredient that can be harmful (like the Zicam that was infamously causing anosmia before it was pulled from shelves and reformulated). I’m going to speculate that if it’s something homeopathic causing his hand to swell and discolor, it’s not harmless.
(It can also be harmful if people choose not to take medicine that can actually help because they’d rather use homeopathic remedies with no medicinal value.)