NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #30/NN_1992_30.iso/spool/sci/skeptic/21502

Internet Message Format | 1992-12-21 | 2.5 KB

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From: [e-mail] (Jan Willem Nienhuys)
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic
Subject: Re: homeopaty... NBC's dateline
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 18 Dec 92 11:23:01 GMT
References: <[e-mail]> <1992Dec16.170115.2 <[e-mail]>
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Organization: Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands
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In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Carl J Lydick) writes:
>
>The basis of homeopathy is to find a substance which, in sufficiently large
>doses, would produce EXACTLY the same symptoms as the disease being treated.
>Now you're saying that the symptoms should be slightly different.

But it should be kept in mind that EXACTLY goes a long way.
In the first place the profession and constitution of the person to be
treated (ptbt) must also be similar (not identical) to the test person (tp)
on whom the drug was tested.  Whether the pain is on the left or on the
right, whether it is worse in the evening or in the morning, on the seaside
or in the mountains: it all counts.  Also what counts is the metaphorical
way the ptbt expresses his/her complaint: "a cough that feels like a worm
is wiggling back and forth in the throat"  is for instance a very important
symptom, which points almost certainly to Bryonia as the best cure.
Typical symptoms are "unremembered dreams", "itchy feeling on the outside
of the rtight hand", "romantic feelings in moonlight",  and when a woman
complains of anything, "irregular menses" are part of the constitution,
and hence a determinant of the cure to be chosen. But also whether she
likes beer or wine more and whether she can stand heat or cold better.

So in practice (homeopathic practice, that is), no cure can be found
that produces ALL symptoms (even though thousands of "symptoms" may
be associated with a single cure like Natrium Muriaticum (kitchen salt,
diluted 10^30 times)).  So the homeopath will try to find the
"simillimum" = most similar cure.  This involves a lot of studying
in very thick books, which often impresses the patient a lot.  And if
the cure doesn't work, the simillimum wasn't similar enough, so something
else should be tried.  Giving the wrong cure (all in the homeopathic
point of view) is very bad, because it will cause extra complaints.

There's a kind of Boolean logic behind this: a+b=0 if and only if a=b.
And after 200 years of attacks, the system is waterproofed against
any experimental verification.

JWN