Not an accident of history ..
It was Chemistry Just like the bicycle shop is where you got your radio .. and batteries
Yes, the. only the anti-inflammatories I generally ever need are lung related and my pulmonologist and cardiologist are in lockstep. I recieve exemplary care
Annual check-ups with both this month went very well ![]()
Quite separately, homeopathy is considered a normal method of treatment to run alongside conventional medicine. I have known at least one trained and qualified pharmacist who was working to demonstrate a biochemical basis, but I’ve not heard from him for 7 or 8 years now.
Our previous French doctor would never prescribe Nurofen or anything with Ibuprofen in it. He reckoned it was bad for the heart. Luckily I don’t take any medication of any sort but have found in the past that a simple Doliprane did the trick when I fell over a length of piping, bounced off the fence and hurt my ribs last year.
I don’t know about the heart but some researchers report reduced healing due to reducing the natural immune response. We actually need the immune/inflammation response to signal the repair team.
Because in Europe homeopathy has a good reputation and has its place as a remedy of choice. European pharmacists are not blinkered.
BTW, I’ve had great success over the years with homeopathy and our dogs.
Sorry @Ancient_Mariner - hadn’t realised you’d already replied.
Homeopathy has no scientific basis other than placebo or the body treating itself.
Tim Minchin gives an amusing explanation.
If you deeply believe in homeopathy skip this post.
Probably because he’s still searching for a way to chemically transform base metals into gold. That should, at least, be more productive than finding the scientific basis for homeopathy - because there isn’t one.
For making them money?
The power of the mind is an amazing thing but that is all you get with homeopathy.
To be fair, in 1796 when Hahnemann developed his theory nothing was known of the germ theory of disease and even less about the nature of other ailments such as cancer. Admittedly there was the glimmer of a clue when van Leeuwenhoek first stared at the microscopic world over a century earlier in the 1670’s and saw his little animalcules.
But knowledge of the microbial world was limited in 1796 - Jenner was only just vaccinating people with cowpox to prevent the closely related smallpox, Koch had not formulated his postulates, Pasteur had not shown how to prevent spoilage. We knew little of the molecular basis of the physical world, or how elements and atoms work. The periodic table as we know it today was more than 70 years away in 1869.
The idea that something which mimicked the ailment might cure it was not fantastical at the time (after all something like vaccination with cowpox might almost seem to prove it) but we have made a few advances since then and it is clear that serial dilutions to the point way beyond having a single molecule of the noxious substance that you are trying to turn into a cure yields nothing but a laboriously concocted bottle of water.
No, there is no “molecular memory”, and if there was why would it only remember how to cure an ailment and not cause it?
There is only people’s credulity.
Herbology now, there’s something different
Not everything is a miracle cure and there is much quackery but many useful drugs have emerged from the plant world.
Miriam Margolyes as professor sprout, very believable ![]()
Absolutely. ![]()
As Google’s bot says
So it’s not just for the wizarding world ![]()
Absolutely right, it’s completely unscientific. However…
He did demonstrate a measurable effect as a result of the mixing process (integral to homeopathy) but his experiments lacked the rigor required to overwhelm and convince a deliberate skeptic. He might not (almost certainly) have been measuring what he thought he was, but he certainly measured something, and could remove the effect he created by heating and (iirc) with strong magnets. His system used a reporter molecule that gave a measurable (and visible) colour change.
Independently, my mother was treated by a homeopathist who was also a friend. The first time it made her ill, the second time put her in hospital.
So looking at the little evidence I have, there’s something going on, and although it’s almost certainly not what is claimed, it is having some kind of effect.
The French shelves you are describing as homeopathy are a mix of plant based remedies and actual homeopathy products. So you’ll find turmeric there, which is widely used in auto-immune world.
I don’t believe in homeopathy, but I do believe in the importance of feeling you have some control over your health and the power of that.
I also believe in the importance of being listened too, and French pharmacies are great at that, hugely reducing the load on GPs (but equally directly people to their doctor if warrented).
I think it’s exceedingly unlikely that he was measuring anything real and was just documenting observer error with an overlay of expectation bias.
I’m not actually describing them, it was brought up by others.
Hear, hear
Loads of advice (mushrooms included).
I find it interesting that there are restrictions on Ibuprofen here in France, whereas in the US $25 will buy you a bottle of 1000 in any corner drug store.
You can buy a lot of things over there that we disapprove of in France, guns etc. and no doubt vice versa. Autre pays autres mœurs.
I have seen no credible evidence of any homeopathic benefits. And no credibe explantion of any method by which it might work. Lots of opinion, and shed loads of talk though. As @billybutcher is noting, I do mean homeopathy, not any natural herb etc that may easily have an effect.
The effect of placebo is real, and poorly if at all explained, and is fascinating, but does not explain homeopathy at all. Spending effort there woud more likely be of much more benefit.
Is that so you’re hallucinating too much to remember whether the advice was any good? ![]()
If I have a headache and it is cured by Homeopathy, who cares if I simply imagined it providing the headache is gone?