15. The message in the bottle: homeopathy

January 17, 2018 Health & Healing, Sticky Thoughts No Comments

Classic ‘pure’ homeopathy: one takes a number of drops of ‘messaged’ water and gets better. That’s what we are told and guess what, it’s true indeed.

◊◊◊

What is also true is that the person not only takes the water, but also ‘takes’ the expectation that this water will help him. Question: which of both makes him better: the water or the expectation? The question is not whether ‘it’ works. The question is what ‘it’ is.

◊◊◊

Therefore, is the human mind a possible explanation for what happens in homeopathy? I don’t answer that question here. You can answer it yourself. If you say yes, then so much for the homeopathic explanation. It’s in the gutter. As simple as that.

◊◊◊

We as a society should take a very good look at this. There is far more at stake than some water, some alternative medicine or some billions of dollars. At stake are we ourselves. If our minds are doing this, we should respect them. To negate this possibility beforehand, is to disrespect our own minds. That’s bad.

◊◊◊

So.

◊◊◊

‘Scientific’ medicine is not able to tackle homeopathy as long as it denies, in practice, the huge placebo effect of many of its own medications. If you want to be really critical of someone else, you have to be really critical of yourself also.

◊◊◊

The true message in the bottle is that we should look at the broader context of what is happening here. Don’t bet your life on the watery explanation. There is a message hidden somewhere all right. But it’s probably not inside the water. It may be inside us.

◊◊◊

Let’s not waste more words on this.

◊◊◊

Leave a Reply

Related Posts

7. An eye-opener on double-blind studies

The core of present-day scientific medicine is more and more boiling down to ‘evidence based medicine’ (EBM). The essence of EBM is double-blind studies: comparing a new supposedly-active substance to placebo whereby both prescriber(s) and patients are ignorant (‘blind’) in regard to whether they get placebo or the ‘active’ substance. ◊◊◊ Nice. ◊◊◊ Everything (really: Read the full article…

Is Short-Term Enough in Therapy?

This issue is relevant to any therapy. In my view, it is most pertinent to psychotherapy. A clear and present tension In psychotherapy, we may expect the quality being largely related to effect-longevity. To many people – as to me – a temporary feel-good is not what is expected from psychotherapy. Contrast this with pharmacotherapy. Read the full article…

62. Autism: Look who’s not talking

I’m ashamed to live in this age of disgrace. ◊◊◊ As with all ‘categories’ that are no real categories but only feable attempts to uphold an idea of ‘knowing’, there are of course many causes of the phenomenon called ‘autism’. Sure there is genetics involved as well as several physical environmental factors. Is this not Read the full article…

Translate »