4 ms·
When I was 17, I had a cold and the doctor prescribed some homeopathic remedy containing Atropine. Now, the whole point of homeopathy, of course, is to dilute a
by krylon 10y ago
When I was 17, I had a cold and the doctor prescribed some homeopathic remedy containing Atropine. Now, the whole point of homeopathy, of course, is to dilute any ingredients to the point where you are lucky to find even a single molecule of it in a given pill. (In my defense, I did not know anything about medicine back then.)
But I think I must have gotten a package from a batch where they forgot a couple of dilution steps or something. Also I may have misread the instructions. Anyway, it took me about six days to go through the pills, and during that whole time, I could not help but grin almost the entire time. Also, two or three times, I very clearly heard someone talking to me who was not there. I did recognize the voices, they belonged to people I knew. Then again, I looked around, did not see the person and figured that it must have been in my head, which apparently people hallucinating from Atropine are rather incapable of.
OTOH, I had none of the side effects Atropine has according to Wikipedia, so who knows what was going on with me back then. But I understood something was off, and the only thing that had changed from the weeks before were those homeopathic pills. (Just to be clear, all in all the experience was pleasant.)
- simonh 10y agoThere's bee a bit of fuss over here in the UK recently about homeopathic medicines, which are supposed to be ridiculously over-diluted, containing dangerous amounts of various substances. The basic idea that tiny amounts of substances that harm you in various ways might benefit you in a related way is magical thinking. But when you can't rely on the 'tiny amounts' part, you're in pretty nasty territory.
- krylon 10y agoIndeed. I remember reading about some event in the UK where people deliberately "overdosed" on homeopathic "medicine" to demonstrate it has no effect. That could end badly if the stuff is not diluted as much as the label says. Come to think of it, the company I work at does process engineering and plant design/construction mainly for companies in the food industry, but we have a a couple of customers from the pharmaceutical industry as well. And the impression I got so far (being the in-house IT admin, I can only watch it from a distance), is that the pharmaceutical customers are extremely meticulous. And with good reason, of course. Imagine if a batch of paracetamol/acetaminophen tablets contained 5g instead of 0.5g. But if the engineering and QA at homeopathic companies is as scientific as homeopathy itself, that is not surprising. :(
- NobleLie 10y agoMagical Thinking, eh? Vaccines and the entire concept of hormesis is something you should research when you get the chance.
- nameless912 10y agoVaccines operate on a completely different principle....You get exposed to live but neutered or dead bacteria/viruses so your immunoresponse mechanisms learn how to fight it if you ever come across the full strength version. It has nothing to do with homeopathy.
- type0 10y agoSadly, there is no vaccination against stupidity
- simonh 10y agoOh, that's hilarious. Wow!