NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/sci/skeptic/21745

Internet Message Format | 1992-12-28 | 2.3 KB

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From: [e-mail] (Jan Willem Nienhuys)
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic
Subject: Re: Homeopathic remedies
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 28 Dec 92 11:29:51 GMT
References: <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail]
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Organization: Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands
Lines: 35

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Clayten Hamacher) writes:
>
>If it was true that the more diluted something is the more powerful it is
>then please explain why people in mexico city are dyeing from polution
>*because it is so concentrated* and people in the NWT in Canada are not
>dyeing from polution (where there is almost zilch).

The homeopaths know that too.  They maintain that it is the intermittent
shaking between the dilution steps that transfers the immaterial healing
power of the agent to the solvent, amplifying it in the meantime.
The whole point of those high dilutions is to remove the physical effects
of the original drug.  The process of shaking and rubbing (the latter
if the `solvent' is milk sugar) is thought to be analogous to the transfer
of magnetism (another immaterial force) to iron by rubbing and beating.
The reason why those immaterial forces are so important (all according
to homeopaths) is that disease itself is a disturbance of an immaterial
life force.

If this seems irrational to you, remember that the above view is the
one of the founder Hahnemann, a contemporary of Mesmer, living in a time
when medicine was quite primitive, and magnetism wasn't understood
either.  Present day homeopaths still venerate Hahnemann, and read
his scriptures.  Believing in homeopathy is not more irrational than
believing in faith healing, umpteen New Age remedies, the power of the
mind, chrystals and what have you.

It is even not much more irrational than astrology.  The similarity
with astrology is in the extremely complex diagnostic technique, during
which the client (patient) is indoctrinated in the system and provided
with a coherent (even if false) story about his/her own health or life,
told by a sympathetic practitioner who of course charges for his time,
something that some physicians only dare to do if that time is spent
with a modicum of effectiveness.

JWN