The Curious Case of Charles Darwin and Homeopathy
February 18, 2010 by Will
Filed under Homeopathic Medicine
Dana Ullman MPH
Abstract
In 1849, Charles Darwin was so ill that he was unable to work one out of every 3 days, and after having various troubling symptoms for 2–12 years, he wrote to a friend that he was ‘going the way of all flesh’. He sought treatment from Dr James Manby Gully, a medical doctor who used water cure and homeopathic medicines. Despite being highly skeptical of these treatments, he experienced a dramatic improvement in his health, though some of his digestive and skin symptoms returned various times in his life. He grew to appreciate water cure, but remained skeptical of homeopathy, even though his own experiments on insectivore plants using what can be described as homeopathic doses of ammonia salts surprised and shocked him with their significant biological effect. Darwin even expressed concern that he should publish these results. Two of Darwin’s sons were as incredulous as he was, but their observations confirmed the results of his experiments. Darwin was also known to have read a book on evolution written by a homeopathic physician that Darwin described as similar to his own but ‘goes much deeper.’
Introduction
The year 2009 is an auspicious year to the memory of Charles Darwin. It is the 200th birth anniversary of Charles Darwin (1809–1882), and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his seminal work, On the Origin of Species (1859). And yet few people know that, according to Darwin’s own letters, it is uncertain that he would have lived long enough to have written this important scientific work in 1859 if he had not received treatment in 1849 from Dr James Manby Gully, a homeopathic physician who also used water cure, homeopathic medicines and other unorthodox treatments. This remarkable series of experiences changed the history of science.
When Darwin was just 16 years old, he spent a summer as an apprentice to his father, who was a medical doctor. Later, he attended Edinburgh University to study medicine. However, he was repulsed by the brutality of surgery and the primitive medical treatments of his day. He initially studied to be a naturalist, but his father insisted that he attend Cambridge University to become a clergyman (at that time, members of the clergy earned a better living than many other professions). After graduating from Cambridge in 1831, he began what became a 5-year journey on the HMS Beagle surveying the coast of South America. On board the ship, Darwin suffered from seasickness, and in October 1833, he caught fever in Argentina. In July 1834, while returning from the Andes down to the coast of Chile, he fell so ill that he spent a month in bed.
The serious Illness and Near Death of Charles Darwin
Since 1837, Darwin was frequently incapacitated with episodes of stomach pains, vomiting, severe boils, heart palpitations, trembling and other symptoms. Today, some physicians have speculated that Darwin caught Chagas disease from insect bites in South America, while others have suggested that he suffered from Ménière’s disease, but the orthodox physicians of Darwin’s day had no idea what his problem was, and all of their treatments simply made him worse. [Recently, some scientists have speculated that Darwin suffered from systemic lactose intolerance (1), but this remains speculation and may at best represent only one aspect of a more complex disease syndrome.]
In 1847, Darwin’s illness worsened. Again he experienced frequent episodes of vomiting and weakness, but now he also experienced fainting spells and seeing spots in front of his eyes. In March, 1849, he was so sick that he thought he was dying. Darwin wrote to his good friend, J.D. Hooker, an English botanist, that he was ‘unable to do anything one day out of three & was altogether too dispirited to write to you or to do anything but what I was compelled. I thought I was rapidly going the way of all flesh’ (2).
It is indeed difficult to say that Charles Darwin would have been healthy enough to live another 10 years, let alone to work as diligently on the body of work that his seminal book required for its publication in 1859 unless some type of effective treatment significantly improved his health. Lucky for all of humanity, Charles Darwin sought out a different type of medical care and experienced a profound improvement in his health.
Dr. James Manby Gully: Homeopath and Hydrotherapist
It was Capt. Sullivan of the HMS Beagle who initially told Darwin about a different type of medical treatment provided by Dr James Manby Gully (1808–1883). One of Darwin’s cousins, William Darwin Fox, told him that two friends had benefited greatly from Gully’s care. Dr Gully, a medical graduate of the University of Edinburgh, was an unyielding opponent of the use of drugs of that era. Gully was particularly critical of polypharmacy, the common practice of using multiple drugs concurrent for a patient, a practice that continues today (3). Gully’s medical practice did not simply provide water cure and dietary advice; he also prescribed homeopathic medicines and recommended medical clairvoyant readings. In 1846, he had authored a popular book entitled Water Cure in Chronic Disease (3) that Darwin was known to have read.
Darwin chose to go to seek care from Dr Gully, and decided to take the entire family with him (wife Emma and their seven children) (4). Dr Gully and his health spa were situated in Malvern (just southwest of Birmingham), around 150 miles from the Darwin’s home.
Virtually every biography of Charles Darwin references his health problems and acknowledges that the one physician who provided the effective treatment to him was Dr James Manby Gully. However, most of these biographies make reference to Dr Gully as a ‘hydrotherapist’, and only few mention that he was a homeopathic physician.
After being at Dr Gully’s spa for just 9 days, Darwin lamented that Gully had prescribed homeopathic medicine to him: ‘I grieve to say that Dr Gully gives me homeopathic medicines three times a day, which I take obediently without an atom of faith.’ Darwin continued: ‘I like Dr Gully much – he is certainly an able man’ (5). The fact that Darwin saw Gully as being ‘able’ was still not enough to convince him that homeopathic medicines were effective.
The 1846 edition of Dr Gully’s book was during his earlier stage of experience in using homeopathic medicines. In this edition of his book, Gully notes his use of homeopathic medicines, though he doubts its efficacy in certain chronic diseases. He wrote in the first edition of his book, ‘although I might be induced to try to subdue a passing but troublesome symptom, I could not trust to remove the essential nature of a chronic malady by homeopathic means’ (p. 83) (3).
However, by 1848, Dr Gully became a formal member of the British Society of Homeopathy (6), and he maintained his membership through at least 1871 (7). In subsequent editions of his book, his favorable experiences with homeopathy led him to change his writings on the subject. In the 5th edition of this book (1856), for instance, he writes that distinct from the use of conventional medicines in the treatment of chronic constipation where drugs do not cure and lead to relapse, it is significantly different with homeopathic care: ‘In fact, cases abound in which homeopathic treatment alone has effectually and permanently cure habitual costiveness’ (p. 48). In reference to the treatment of headaches, the use of homeopathic medicines is ‘not only justifiable but desirable’ (p. 48).
Finally, Gully continues by asserting, ‘Homeopathic practitioners have observed that patients under the water cure are more susceptible to the action of their remedies than other persons, and that therefore the results may be more accurately calculated. I have found this assertion to be substantially correct; and it confirms the vivifying influence of the water cure over the bodily functions’ (p. 48). Gully’s observation that the use of concurrent treatment of water cure and homeopathic medicine seems to echo the experiences of naturopathic physicians who have been known to use these treatments together along with nutritional advice since the 19th century.
And even though Darwin was extremely skeptical of water-cure and homeopathic medicine, just two days later (March 30, 1849) Darwin acknowledged, ‘I have already received so much benefit that I really hope my health will be much renovated’ (8). After 8 days a skin eruption broke out all over Darwin’s legs, and he was actually pleased to experience this problem because he had previously observed that his physical and mental health improved noticeably after having skin eruptions. He went a month without vomiting, a very rare experience for him, and even gained some weight. One day he surprised himself by being able to walk 7 miles. He wrote to a friend, ‘I am turning into a mere walking & eating machine’ (9).
After just a month of treatment, Charles had to admit that Gully’s treatments were not quackery after all. After 16 weeks, he felt like a new man, and by June he was able to go home to resume his important work. Darwin actually wrote that he was ‘of almost perfect health’ (p. 108) (8).
It is worthy to note that homeopaths have consistently observed that treatment with homeopathic medicines often leads to skin rashes, other externalizations of the disease process, or the re-experience of old symptoms prior to significant overall improvement in health. Homeopaths make reference to this healing process as ‘Hering’s law of cure’, named by Constantine Hering, MD, the father of American homeopathy, who first wrote about it.
Despite Darwin’s greatly improved health, he never publicly attributed any benefits directly to homeopathy. However, one must also realize that even though homeopathy achieved impressive popularity among British royalty, numerous literary greats, and many of the rich and powerful at that time, there was incredible animosity to it from orthodox physicians and scientists. Because Darwin was just beginning to propose his own new ideas about evolution, it would have been professional suicide to broadcast his positive experiences with homeopathy. Having to defend homeopathy would have damaged his credibility among his colleagues who were extremely antagonistic to this emerging medical specialty.
Serious antagonism to Dr John Forbes occurred when he expressed some positive remarks about homeopathy and its founder, Dr Samuel Hahnemann, in a book that he authored that was primarily critical of homeopathy. Even though Forbes was a distinguished Scottish physician, the editor of a leading conventional medical journal, and the Physician to Queen Victoria (1841–1861), Forbes was viciously attacked for his minor praise of homeopathy, and many British physicians withdrew their subscription to his previously popular journal, leading to the fatal demise of this previously successful journal (10).
Eighteen months after first going to Dr Gully, Darwin showed his own skepticism of homeopathy when he wrote in a letter:
You speak about Homeopathy, which is a subject which makes me more wrath, even than does Clairvoyance [in reference to clairvoyance, the woman who Gully used was thought to be able to look directly into a person's body]. Clairvoyance so transcends belief, that one’s ordinary faculties are put out of the question, but in homeopathy common sense and common observation come into play, and both these must go to the dogs, if the infinitesimal doses have any effect whatever. How true is a remark I saw the other day by Quetelet [a famous statistician of that time], in respect to evidence of curative processes, viz., that no one knows in disease what is the simple result of nothing being done, as a standard with which to compare homoeopathy, and all other such things. It is a sad flaw, I cannot but think, in my beloved Dr. Gully, that he believes in everything. When Miss — was very ill, he had a clairvoyant girl to report on internal changes, a mesmerist to put her to sleep, an homeopathist, viz. Dr. —, and himself as hydropathist! and the girl recovered (11).
Along with his skepticism in this letter, he also noted the case of a specific woman who had been cured by Dr Gully and his team. Darwin may have been very skeptical of homeopathy, but he had observed its results on his own health and in that of others, and he remained surprised and unconvinced.
Darwin occasionally experienced relapses of digestive and skin symptoms over the years, so he returned to Dr Gully’s clinic for more treatments, staying 2–8 weeks. Although Darwin complained during his first visit that he experienced ‘complete stagnation of the mind’, he did not have similar problems during later visits to Gully’s clinic and spa. In fact, he asserted that his mind was alert and that his scientific writing was progressing well (p. 113) (9).
He lived for 33 more years, and it is surprising and confusing that the story of Darwin’s successful experiences with hydrotherapy and homeopathy has not become an integral part of the history of science and medicine today. After significant improvement in his persistent nausea and vomiting, frequent fainting spells, spots before his eyes, incapacitating stomach pains, severe fatigue, widespread boils, nerve-wrecking tremors and heart palpitations, he was considerably more able to do his seminal scientific work.
One of Charles Darwin’s children, Annie, did not have good results with Dr Gully’s treatment. In 1849, the same year in which the Darwin family stayed at Dr Gully’s spa for 3 months, Annie contracted scarlet fever at the age of 8 years. There is no record of Dr Gully providing treatment for her at this time, but when she was 10, she became very ill. Dr Gully predicted that his treatment would lead to her recovery, but she died under his care. Although Darwin had experienced dramatically positive results from Gully’s combination of treatments, Darwin felt less comfortable having his children receive some of such unorthodox care. There is no record of what treatments she did or did not receive, but in any case, Charles and his entire family were devastated by the loss of Annie.
Some other people of significant notoriety who benefited from Dr Gully’s care include Charles Dickens (novelist and writer), Lord Alfred Tennyson (poet), Florence Nightingale (famed nurse), George Eliot (British novelist), Thomas Carlyle (Scottish essayist, satirist and historian), John Ruskin (art critic and social critic), Edward Bulwer-Lytton (British novelist, playwright, and politician), Thomas Babington Macaulay (first Baron Macaulay, poet and politician), and Bishop Samuel Wilberforce (12). Furthermore, three prime ministers sought Dr Gully’s care, including William Gladstone, Benjamin Disraeli and George Hamilton-Gordon, as well as Queen Victoria herself. Hamilton-Gordon described Dr Gully as ‘the most gifted physician of the age’ (13).
Dr Gully was not the only homeopathic physician to provide clinical care to cultural elite of the 19th century. In fact, many of the leading politicians, clergy, literary greats, musical geniuses, royalty and wealthy classes were known patients and even advocates of homeopathy (10,14).
Although there is no evidence that Darwin knew that so many other well-known ‘cultural heroes’ sought the care of Dr Gully, Darwin was pleased to hear when other people he knew received treatment from Gully. When his second cousin, William Darwin Fox, the man who introduced Darwin to entomology and to Dr Gully, had seen the doctor, Darwin expected him to have benefited from water cure and to be much stronger (15). When one considers that Darwin had previously received much medical care without positive results, Darwin’s letter to Fox on December 7, 1855, confirmed a different experience with Dr Gully: ‘Dr Gully did me much good’ (his emphasis).
Some of Darwin’s biographers never mention the homeopathic treatment he received. Those biographers who mention his longtime health problems tend to emphasize the hydrotherapy that Dr Gully’s spa provided and that Charles Darwin followed up on this treatment by regularly self-treating himself with cold baths and self-percussion of his body. A recent acclaimed biography of Darwin suggested the benefits he received were from a placebo effect, despite the inability to experience a similar placebo effect from the many other physicians he saw and the various treatments he attempted. This biography asserted that, ‘he persuaded himself that the water-torture was working’ (p. 112) (9).
Darwin’s Continued Water Cure and Homeopathic Treatment
There is a long history of antagonism to homeopathic medicine from orthodoxy, and also a history of antagonism to water cure (16). While homeopathy has persisted internationally as a minority school of medical thought and practice (17–19), water cure as a medical treatment for chronic ailments has become marginalized or is hardly utilized today except by a minority of naturopathic physicians.
Darwin and many of his biographers have highlighted water cure in part because they simply could not believe that homeopathic medicines could provide any benefit. However, one must wonder if hydrotherapy alone could have provided these significant health benefits, especially in the first week of treatment that Darwin experienced. What is additionally intriguing about this story of Darwin is that it confirms an ultimately essential observation of truly effective healing methods: that they can and will be effective whether or not the person believes they will work.
Hardened skeptics insist that homeopathic treatment could not have helped Darwin (or anyone) and suggest that hydrotherapy must have been the method of therapeutic benefit. And yet, few orthodox physicians of that day or today would even consider using hydrotherapy for people with complex disease processes.
Despite the wide respect that Dr Gully received from his many illustrious patients, he was disliked greatly by select orthodox physicians. Sir Charles Hastings, a physician who later helped to found the British Medical Association, was Gully’s most vitriolic antagonist. Dr Hastings was so opposed hydrotherapy that he frequently wrote articles about its ‘dangers’, while he utilized a wide range of orthodox medical treatments that everyone would soon call simply barbaric (16). The additional drama to the lives of Gully and Hastings is that their sons were also antagonists to each other. Gully’s son, William Court Gully, became speaker of the British House of Lords (1895–1905), while Hastings’ son, George Woodyatt Hastings, became a lawyer and politician. Like his father, George Hastings was actively antagonistic to unconventional medical treatments.
Darwin’s letters also expressed his thoughts about conventional medicine of his time. He said emphatically that he had ‘no faith whatever in ordinary Doctoring’. And yet, after 12 years of persistent nausea and vomiting, Darwin acknowledged in 1856 that Dr Gully’s treatment in 1849 was successful enough that ‘never (or almost never) the vomiting returns’ (p. 238) (15).
When Dr Gully retired from his full-time practice in Malvern in the late 1850s, he chose Dr James Smith Ayerst (1824/5–1884) as his replacement. Not surprisingly, Ayerst was also a homeopathic physician. He served as assistant surgeon in the Royal Navy, was physician to Great Malvern, Worcestershire, ran a hydropathic establishment at Old Well House, Malvern Wells in conjunction with that of Dr Gully, and later, practiced homeopathy and hygienics in Torquay, Devon (20).
Darwin’s wife Emma wrote to W. Darwin Fox: ‘We like Dr Ayerst, tho’ he has not the influence of Dr Gully. Dr G. it is hopeless to try to see tho’ I must say he has been to see Ch. [Charles] twice & he quite approves of his treatment’ (Vol. XI, p. 643) (15). Darwin visited other hydrotherapy spas as well. In 1857 and 1859, he visited Moor Park, run by Edward Wickstead Lane, MD, a physician and hydrotherapist (not a homeopath). And perhaps not by happenstance, Darwin’s famed book On the Origin of Species was at the printing press, while he was at Ilkley Wells, a spa operated by Edmund Smith, MD, another homeopathic physician (Vol. XI, p. 361) (15).
Darwin Experiments with Homeopathic Doses
It is also fascinating to note that Darwin himself conducted several experiments evaluating the effects of small doses on an insect-eating plant (Drosera rotundifolia, commonly called sundew) that is commonly used in homeopathic medicine. He found that solutions of certain salts of ammonia stimulated the glands of the plant’s tentacles and caused the plant to turn inward. He made this solution more and more dilute, but the plant still was able to detect the presence of the salt. On July 7, 1874, he wrote to a well-known physiologist, Professor F. C. Donders of Utrecht, Netherlands, that he observed that 1/4 000 000 of a grain had a demonstrable effect upon the Drosera, and Darwin was shocked and dismayed to write, ‘the 1/20 000 000th of a grain of the crystallised salt does the same. Now, I am quite unhappy at the thought of having to publish such a statement’ (11).
Astonished by his observation, Darwin likened it to a dog that perceives the odor of an animal a quarter of a mile distant. He said: ‘Yet these particles must be infinitely smaller than the one twenty millionth of a grain of phosphate of ammonia’ (21). Darwin said about this spectacular phenomenon:
The reader will best realize this degree of dilution by remembering that 5,000 ounces would more than fill a thirty-one gallon cask [barrel]; and that to this large body of water one grain of the salt was added; only half a drachm, or thirty minims, of the solution being poured over a leaf. Yet this amount sufficed to cause the inflection of almost every tentacle, and often the blade of the leaf. … My results were for a long time incredible, even to myself, and I anxiously sought for every source of error. … The observations were repeated during several years. Two of my sons, who were as incredulous as myself, compared several lots of leaves simultaneously immersed in the weaker solutions and in water, and declared that there could be no doubt about the difference in their appearance. … In fact every time that we perceive an odor, we have evidence that infinitely smaller particles act on our nerves (p. 170) (21).
In Darwin’s book on his experiments with Drosera, he expressed complete amazement at the hypersensitivity of a plant to extremely small doses of certain chemicals: ‘Moreover, this extreme sensitiveness, exceeding that of the most delicate part of the human body, as well as the power of transmitting various impulses from one part of the leaf to another, have been acquired without the intervention of any nervous system’ (p. 272) (21).
Darwin also discovered that Drosera is not simply sensitive to every substance. He tested various alkaloids and other substances that act powerfully on humans and animals who have a nervous system but produced no effect on Drosera. He concluded that the ‘power of transmitting an influence to other parts of the leaf, causing movement, or modified secretion, or aggregation, does not depend on the presence of a diffused element, allied to nerve-tissue’ (p. 273) (21).
Darwin confirmed an important homeopathic observation that living systems are hypersensitive to only certain substances. Sadly and strangely, conventional scientists have attacked homeopaths for using extremely small doses of substances without any appreciation for the homeopaths’ credo that living systems—whether human, animal, or plant—will be hypersensitive to a limited number of substances (and the homeopathic method of individualizing treatment is a refined method to find this substance or substances).
The doses in which Darwin tested above are not as dilute as most other homeopathic medicines, some of which are so dilute that, in all probability, they may not have any remaining molecules of the original medicine in the solution. However, a large number of homeopaths and a larger number of the general public use what are called ‘low potencies’, which includes doses of medicines in the range in which Darwin was testing ammonia salts. Furthermore, Darwin noted the remarkable effects that his extremely small doses had on a plant that did not have a nervous system, thereby suggesting that human beings (and other animals) may be sensitive to even smaller doses of certain substances. However, there is no known record of Darwin testing even smaller doses on plants, let alone on humans.
Darwin was so enraptured by his experiments on Drosera that on November 24, 1860, just 1 year after the publication of his seminal book, he wrote ‘at this present moment I care more about Drosera than the origin of all the species in the world’ (22).
Darwin’s Admiration of Another Homeopath
The archive of letters from Darwin includes one other interesting reference to homeopathy in which its significance is obvious but its meaning not perfectly clear. This was in an August 20, 1862, letter to Asa Gray, a professor of botany (of which the first part, shown below in brackets, was probably written by Francis Darwin, his son and assistant, who collated his father’s letters):
[The greater number of the letters of 1862 deals with the Orchid work, but the wave of conversion to Evolution was still spreading, and reviews and letters bearing on the subject still came in numbers. As an example of the odd letters he received may be mentioned one which arrived in January of this year] from a German homoeopathic doctor, an ardent admirer of the ‘Origin.’ Had himself published nearly the same sort of book, but goes much deeper. Explains the origin of plants and animals on the principles of homoeopathy or by the law of spirality. Book fell dead in Germany. Therefore would I translate it and publish it in England (p. 175) (11).
What is intriguing about Darwin’s statement is that he asserted that this writing by a homeopathic doctor is similar to his own but ‘goes much deeper’.
Robert Jütte, PhD, chief historian at the Robert Bosch Institute in Stuttgart, Germany, where Hahnemann’s casebooks reside and which may have the largest homeopathic library in the world, has determined that this German homeopath was probably Augustus Wilhelm Koch (1805–1886) (Jütte, R. Personal Communication, March 29–30, 2006). Koch was a conventionally trained physician, graduated from the University of Tubingen, Germany in 1831. He began to study and practice homeopathy within a couple of years, and at the invitation of some influential families in Stuttgart, he moved there and developed a successful homeopathic practice. In 1846, he wrote a 613-page book called Die Homöopathie, physiologisch, pathologisch und therapeutisch begründet: oder das Gesetz des Lebens im gesunden und kranken (The homeopathic, physiologically, pathologically and therapeutically foundations: or the law of the life in the healthy and ill).
Dr Jütte notes that in the introduction to this book (p. xv) Koch explains homeopathy scientifically by including it in a more general ‘Grundgesetz des organischen Lebens’, which could be translated as ‘law of spirality’. A whole chapter is devoted to the evolution of crystals, plants, and animals.
A year after Dr Koch published this book he moved to Philadelphia, though before leaving Europe, he was made an honorary member of the Homeopathic Institute of Paris. When in the USA, Koch was an active member of the American Institute of Homeopathy and Pennsylvania state and Philadelphia county homeopathic medical societies. He even served on the board of trustees of Hahnemann Medical College in Philadelphia (23). A close friend and colleague of America’s preeminent teacher of homeopathy, Dr Constantine Hering (1800–1880), Dr Koch was one of his pallbearers.
Although Koch lived in the USA and could speak and write in English, he probably still sought Darwin (or someone else) whose mother tongue was English in order to have the most accurate translation. Sadly, his master work was never published in English.
Despite Darwin’s personal experiences and significant successes as a homeopathic patient, he never publicly acknowledged the benefits he received. And despite his own experiments on plants using homeopathic doses, he never used the word ‘homeopathic’ in his public writings. Although these actions may seem surprising, Darwin’s decision to avoid reference to homeopathy was an important part of his own survival strategy.
Ultimately, even though Charles Darwin had a long-time skepticism of homeopathic medicine, his life and health seems to have been impacted by it, and he engaged in experimentation that verified the power of extremely small doses on plants. Furthermore, he was found to express appreciation for the contributions to science that select homeopathic physicians were known to provide.
2009 is the year in which we honor Charles Darwin’s 200th birth anniversary and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his seminal book, originally published on November 24, 1859. When commemorating the many vital contributions that Charles Darwin made to science, we should not ignore the therapeutic contributions that may have allowed Darwin to live beyond his own life expectations and that seemingly played an important role in improving his physical and mental health.
When physicians and scientists today consider how much resistance Darwin experienced to his new ideas and how much resistance still exists for them, perhaps the same physicians and scientists should also reflect on and learn from the far greater resistance that they themselves have given to homeopathic medicine, hydrotherapy, and other unconventional medical treatments. It is indeed ironic that so many physicians and scientists over the past 150 years have vehemently obstructed the acceptance, the growth and the development of the unconventional medical treatments that seem to have lengthened Darwin’s life. Until and unless physicians and scientists learn from history, they (we) will continue to make the same mistakes and simply delay the evolution of a truly healthy medical care system.
References
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4.Keynes RD. His Daughter and Human Evolution ( 2002;) New York: Riverhead.
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Received March 11, 2009; accepted October 4, 2009
Online ISSN 1741-4288 – Print ISSN 1741-427X
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Happy Valentines Day
February 14, 2010 by Will
Filed under Homeopathic Medicine
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Treat Diseases Effectively Through Homeopathy, Yoga and Meditation
February 11, 2010 by Will
Filed under Homeopathic Medicine
Modern lifestyle has left everyone with a chain of ailments that often remains fully uncured for an entire lifetime. It is common knowledge that allopathic medicines bring a host of side effects during the course of the treatment. In order to overcome the problems brought about by allopathic medicines, people are increasingly resorting to alternative treatment techniques such as homeopathy and yoga.
Homeopathy is one of the most common forms of alternative medicine in the world today. Like Yoga and meditation, it is a holistic approach to disease treatment. In treating an individual, homeopathy takes into consideration the patient’s mental, emotional and physical health standpoint. After studying the patients’ present and past bodily symptoms, the naturopath medicates him/her so as to rid the patient of his disease and heal the body completely.
Homeopathic medicines are potentised so as to release the latent curative property of the medicine and at the same time are administered in minimum doses so as to stimulate basic immune responses of the body to treat the disease. Though this takes longer time than allopathic medicine, the treatment is devoid of any side effects and results in the holistic rejuvenation of health. Moreover, it enhances the disease fighting ability of the body. In some cases, it has been instrumental in avoiding surgery.
In most cases, doctors combine other alternative modes of treatment such as yoga and meditation in order to hasten the recovery process of the patient. Yoga is an ancient healing technique that originated in India and has for centuries; it has been practiced by people to retain a healthy body and mind. It has also been used as an effective treatment technique by many. What originated in India is now very popular even in the West. It is now been incorporated in the daily exercise regime by many celebrities.
At the physical level, Yoga comprises of ‘asanas’ or Yogic postures, which when performed regularly immunes the body from a host of diseases. It also builds the stamina of the body. At the mental level, certain postures and techniques in yoga such as meditation enhances concentration, relieves stress and promotes healing. Yoga and meditation when practiced together helps a person attain mental and physical harmony. This is a great way to keep away from diseases.
Homeopathy, yoga and meditation, when combined together can hasten the healing process and treat any disease quickly. They can heal several diseases and keep the body immune from diseases. In today’s world, everyone is bound to find a way to cope with stress and produce immense energy. Nothing can be rival homeopathy; yoga and meditation in helping you achieve all of this.
The Case FOR Homeopathic Medicine: The Historical and Scientific Evidence
February 10, 2010 by Will
Filed under Homeopathic Medicine
The Case FOR Homeopathic Medicine: The Historical and Scientific Evidence
A lot of people today are confused about what homeopathy is (and isn’t), and this situation is not helped by the skeptics of homeopathy who go to incredible extents to exaggerate and misconstrue what homeopathic medicine is and who commonly provide misinformation about it. It is more than a tad ironic that these “skeptics” who hold themselves out as “defenders of medical science” have exhibited an embarrassingly poor scientific attitude when evaluating what homeopathy is and what the scientific evidence does and doesn’t say about it.
Because many skeptics of homeopathy today indulge in spreading misinformation about homeopathy, this blog is addressed at setting the record straight and is packed with references to confirm the veracity of what is being asserted here.
First, to clarify, advocating for or using homeopathic medicines does not preclude appreciation for or use of selective conventional medical treatment. Advocates of homeopathy simply honor the Hippocratic tradition of “First, do no harm” and therefore seek to explore and utilize safer methods before resorting to more risky treatments. This perspective has historical and international roots, and it is thus no surprise that American health care which has been so resistant to homeopathic and natural therapies in its mainstream institutions is presently ranked 37th in the world in the performance of its health care system.(1) In comparison, the number one ranked country in the world is France, a country in which around 40 percent of the population uses homeopathic medicines and around 30 percent of its family physicians prescribe them (2).
The Evidence IS There
The fact that homeopathy became extremely popular during the 19th century primarily because of its impressive successes in treating the infectious disease epidemics that raged during that time is a fact that is totally ignored by skeptics.(3)(4)(5) It is highly unlikely that a placebo response is the explanation for homeopathy’s notable successes in treating epidemics of cholera, yellow fever, scarlet fever, typhoid, pneumonia, or influenza. Skeptics are wonderfully clever in trying to make up stories and excuses for the good and often amazing results that people get from homeopathic medicines. Most often, however, they simply say that “old news is no news,” as they brag about not learning from the past as though this is a good thing.
There are more than 150 placebo controlled clinical studies, most of which have shown positive results, either compared with a placebo or compared with a conventional drug.(6-10)
If that were not enough, studies testing the effects of homeopathic medicines on cell cultures, plants, animals, physics experiments, and chemistry trials have shown statistically significant effects. (11-16) Needless to say, the placebo effect in these basic science studies is virtually non-existent, while the effects from homeopathic doses are significant and sometimes substantial.
Skeptics are virulently silent on the entire field of hormesis (the multidisciplinary science of evaluating the power of small doses of varied biological systems) and its thousands of studies in a wide variety of scientific disciplines. (17)(18) This silence on hormesis is completely understandable because their acknowledgement of this body of evidence obliterates much of their criticisms of homeopathy. The doses of homeopathic medicines that are commonly sold in health food stores and pharmacies throughout the world are in a similar low dosage range of the thousands of hormesis studies on low-dose effects. It is very odd that skeptics ignore the thousands of studies in this field, and yet, these same skeptics repeat their embarrassingly uninformed mantra of “where is the research?” It is indeed no wonder that these skeptics are often referred to as “denialists” rather than skeptics.
It is readily acknowledged that the pharmacological process of making homeopathic medicines is often misunderstood or inadequately understood. Homeopathic medicines are made with a specific process, called potentization, that is unique to homeopathy. Each medicine is made in double-distilled water in a glass test-tube, diluted in a 1:10 or 1:100 solution that is vigorously shaken 40 or more times. Then, this process of dilution and succussion (vigorous shaking) is repeated 3, 6, 12, 30, 200, 1,000, or more times. Although one would think that one is diluting out whatever was in the original solution, the immense worldwide experience using homeopathic medicines over the past 200 years prove otherwise.
There is a body of intriguing but not yet fully verified theories about how homeopathic medicines work. These theories are too technical for this article, though I sincerely hope that the “good skeptics” out there will work to explore and help figure out the many mysteries that may explain homeopathy, rather than repeat the old reactionary mantra that “it cannot work.”
For instance, the new “silica hypothesis” is particularly intriguing, especially in light of the fact that approximately six parts per million of “silica fragments” or “chips” are known to fall off the walls of glass vials during the shaking process, and with the creation of nano-bubbles from the shaking process, the water pressure is changed dramatically, akin to being at over 10,000 feet altitude.(19)
Because a homeopathic medicine is selected for its unique ability to cause the specific pattern or syndrome of symptoms that it is known to cause in overdose, a living organism has a hypersensitivity to even extremely small doses of the correctly chosen homeopathic medicine. Just as a “C” note of a piano is hypersensitive to other “C” notes, living organisms are hypersensitive to extremely small doses of medicines that are made from substances that cause the similar symptoms that the sick person is experiencing. This ancient principle, “like cures like,” was heralded by the Oracle at Delphi, the Bible, and various Eastern cultures, and the fact that modern-day immunology and allergy treatments derive from the primary principle of homeopathy, “the law of similars,” provides additional substantiation to this system of medicine. Conventional allergy treatment and vaccination are two of the very few conventional medical treatments that do something to augment immune response, and yet, both of these treatments derive from the homeopathic principle of similars.
Actually, a better description of this principle of similars is the “principle of resonance,” which any student of music knows has both power and hypersensitivity. The additional wisdom of this homeopathic principle is that it use leads to the prescription of medicines that mimic, rather than that suppress, the symptoms and the innate intelligence of the human body. Because homeopathic medicines are prescribed for their ability to mimic the similar symptoms that the sick person is experiencing, it is no wonder that people find that these medicines augment immune competence and improve body and mind health.
In this light, homeopathy can and should be considered a type of “medical biomimicry” and a “resonance medicine.”
Homeopaths may not yet adequately understand precisely how their medicines work, but the body of historical and present-day evidence and experience is simply too significant to ignore. The fact that so many highly respected people and cultural heroes over the past 200 years have used and advocated for homeopathy provides additional evidence for this medical system. Some of these cultural heroes include eleven U.S. Presidents, six popes, JD Rockefeller, Charles Darwin, Mother Teresa, Mahatma Gandhi, and scores of literary greats, corporate leaders, sports superstars, world-class musicians, and monarchs from virtually every European country.(20)
It is also important to acknowledge that hundreds of thousands, even millions, of medical doctors learned conventional medicine but have used homeopathic medicines in conjunction with or (commonly) in replacement of conventional medicines. In comparison, the number of medical professionals who have trained in homeopathy and who then stopped using these medicines is extremely small. The fact that homeopathic medicine represents the leading medical alternative in Europe and in significant portions of Asia (especially India and Pakistan) provides additional support for this often misunderstood medical science and art. In fact, over 100 million people in India depend solely on this form of medical care.(21) Further, according to an A.C. Neilsen survey, 62 percent of current homeopathy users in India have never tried conventional medicines and 82 percent of homeopathy users would not switch to conventional treatments.(22)
The So-Called Best Evidence that Homeopathy Does Not Work
Sadly and strangely, the skeptics of homeopathy put much of their belief that homeopathy does not work on a review and comparison of homeopathic and conventional medical research that was published in the Lancet in 2005.(23) The Lancet even published an editorial in this same issue entitled “The End of Homeopathy.”
However, this “evidence” is a very controversial and some say extremely flawed review of homeopathic research.(24)(25) This review sought to compare 110 placebo-controlled homeopathic studies and with a “matched” group of 110 studies testing conventional medications. The researchers appropriately sought to only evaluate those studies that their criteria deemed to be a “high quality” study.
Although the idea of comparing studies is a good idea, the way that this group of researchers evaluated only a small subset of all studies showed an initial and ongoing bias, as you shall soon see…
First, it is important to know that the leader of this review of homeopathic research is A. Shang’s boss (and co-author of this article) is M. Eggers, a noted vocal skeptic of homeopathy. Second, evidence of strong bias against homeopathy by these researchers was brought to light by the Lancet’s senior editor, Zoe Mullan, who acknowledged that, “Professor Eggers stated at the onset that he expected to find that homeopathy had no effect other than that of placebo.”(26)
Shang and his team deemed that “high quality trials” must fit certain criteria. It must be acknowledged that two other meta-analyses that have previously been published in the Lancet (1997) and the British Medical Journal (1991) have deemed several trials that had strongly positive effects from homeopathic treatment as “high quality” than was not deemed as such by Shang (and he has never commented about this discrepancy).
Despite the problems in comparing conventional medical research and homeopathic research, let’s assume that the two groups of studies ARE comparable. It is therefore more than a tad ironic that they found 21 of the homeopathic studies fit this definition of “high quality” clinical researcher but only 9 of the conventional studies did so. One would have thought that the researchers would then compare these “high quality” trials. However, this result would have shown that there IS a difference between homeopathic treatment and a placebo in a variety of ailments, and authors (who are known skeptics of homeopathy) could not allow that conclusion.
Instead, Shang’s group chose to only evaluate a much smaller subset of these high quality trials. They limited the review to the largest trials in both groups to 8 homeopathic trials (with at least 98 subjects) and six conventional trials (with at least 146 subjects). Strangely enough, when evaluating only this last group of larger studies, they were not comparable in ANY way. The diseases that they treated were all different. And conveniently enough, the researchers asserted that one of the large trials testing homeopathic medicines in the treatment of patients with polyarthritis (arthritis in multiple joints) did not have a comparable trial (they actually asserted with complete seriousness that there has never been a study of patients with this common malady, and rather than admit that this large trial of 175 patients which showed significant efficacy of treatment, they simply threw out the trial from their evaluation). When one realizes that NONE of the studies in the final evaluation matched each other in any way, the researchers’ decision to throw out this study on the homeopathic treatment of people with polyarthritis is additional evidence of the researcher’s strong biases and their efforts to prove homeopathy as a placebo “by hook or by crook.”
The researchers put a higher value of those studies with larger numbers of patients because they asserted that smaller trials are “biased,” even though they were randomized double-blind and placebo studies (and many of which were published in the Lancet, the BMJ, and other highly respected conventional medical journals). One group of four studies on patients with respiratory allergies which included 253 subjects and was published in the BMJ(27) was not a part of the final analysis without explanation. An earlier study published in the Lancet with 144 subjects suffering from hay fever was also missing from the final analysis.(28) The fact that these studies showed a significant benefit from homeopathic treatment was ignored entirely.
Using large number of subjects is “do-able” in homeopathy, though it is simply less frequent, due to the high costs of such studies and due to the fact that the profit margin for the sale of homeopathic medicines does not even approach that of conventional drugs. Also, it is a lot easier using conventional medicine than homeopathic medicine in studies because the very nature of homeopathy is the necessity to evaluate a person’s overall syndrome, not just any localized disease. This type of sophistication in individualized treatment is a part of good acupuncture treatment as well.
It is therefore not surprising that six of the eight large homeopathic trials gave the same homeopathic medicine to every subject, no matter what symptoms of the disease the subjects in the experiments experienced. Astonishingly enough, the Shang review included a “weight-loss” study in their final review. The “study” used Thyroidinum 30C (a small dose of thyroid gland), even though this remedy is not reported in the homeopathic literature as an appropriate medicine for this condition.
Even though a study can be “well designed” and “well conducted,” it will become a “junk science” study if the drug used is totally inappropriate for the sick person. As it turns out, six of the eight homeopathic studies in the final analysis by Shang used homeopathic medicines that were unlikely to be prescribed by a practicing homeopath (they prescribe their medicines based on the overall syndrome of physical and psychological symptoms the patient has, not just based on the diagnosed name of the disease, except in exceptional situations). In research and statistics, good studies need to have “internal validity” (how the study was designed and conducted) and “external validity” (how the treatment in the study can be generalized to clinical practice). The Shang group did not even seek to evaluate whether any of the studies had “external validity” or not. Sad, but true.
Perhaps the most interesting fact about this study was totally ignored by its authors. Of the six large and high quality conventional medical trials tested drugs that were deemed to be “effective,” three of these medical treatments have been withdrawn from medical use due to the serious side effects that later research confirmed. In other words, while conventional medicines were “proven” to be initially effective, further studies “proved” that these treatments provided more problems than benefits (a fact totally overlooked by the authors of this review).
Finally, imagine if researchers evaluated ALL studies for which antibiotics were used. Although antibiotics are primarily effective in the treatment of bacterial infections, they have been tested to treat a wide variety of infections, not just bacterial, but as we all know, antibiotics are not effective for anything other than bacterial infection (and even then, the frequency of use of antibiotics will reduce their efficacy because the bacteria adapt to it). Just because antibiotics are not effective for most conditions does not mean that specific antibiotics are ineffective for specific conditions. Good science requires specificity, not over-generalized statements, as Shang and his ilk have made.
Although the above seems to be a simple and logical statement, skeptics of homeopathy prove their paucity of rational thought by lumping together ALL types of homeopathic research, then throwing out or ignoring the vast majority of studies (including MOST of the studies that the researchers defined as “high quality”), and using studies that are not good examples of how homeopathy is practiced.
For instance, the World Health Organization has deemed that childhood diarrhea represents one of the most serious public health problems in the world today because millions of children die each year as a result of dehydration from diarrhea. With this concern in mind, three randomized double-blind trials were conducted testing individually chosen homeopathic medicines for children with diarrhea. One of these studies was published in Pediatrics,(29) and another study was published in another highly respected pediatric medical journal.(30) All three of these trials showed a significant benefit from homeopathic treatment when compared with placebo.
Similarly, four double-blind placebo controlled trials has shown benefit from the homeopathic medicine, Oscillococcinum, in the treatment of influenza.(31) Research has consistently found it to be effective in the treatment of influenza, though it does not seem to be effective in its prevention.
As for homeopathy and respiratory allergies, reference above was already made to four studies that showed effectiveness of homeopathic treatment (2 of which were published in the BMJ and one of which was published in the Lancet). Further, a review of seven double-blind and placebo controlled studies showed that homeopathic doses of Galphimia glauca were effective in treating people with hay fever.(32)
The two new re-analyses of the Shang review of homeopathic research provide the old cliche, GIGO. Junk data indeed creates junk science which creates junk and meaningless results. And ironically, THIS study is considered the ‘best” evidence that homeopathy does not work. If this is the best that they have, skepticism of homeopathy is not only dead, it is stupid dead.
While I would like to think that this article would finally put the last nail in the coffin of skeptics of homeopathy, I know that Big Pharma will not allow that to happen. Further, these skeptics are often like religious fundamentalists who will believe what they want to believe no matter what. And then, there’s the impact from cognitive dissonance: many people who have invested their time and energy into conventional medicine simply cannot imagine admitting that homeopathy may have any benefit. It may be time to put that rotary telephone in the attic along with the typewriter and your former skepticism of homeopathic medicine.
A Simple Challenge to Skeptics
To adequately and accurately evaluate homeopathy, one has to evaluate the whole body of evidence that has enabled homeopathy to persist for 200+ years. While evaluating double-blind clinical trials is important, so is evaluating the wide body of basic sciences, as well as the clinical outcome trials, the epidemiological studies, the cost-effectiveness literature, and the serial case review trials. It is strange that these defenders of science would remain so ignorant of the whole body of evidence that homeopathic medicine stands. Some leading skeptics of homeopathy even pride themselves on the value of having a closed mind to homeopathy.(33)
Skeptics of homeopathy assume that homeopaths, more than any other type of health practitioner, have incredible magic powers to elicit a placebo effect. We all acknowledge a certain power of the placebo in treating the “worried well,” but do skeptics of homeopathy really believe that a placebo effect is consistently effective to treat all of the serious illnesses that are commonly treated by homeopaths…and for which good double-blind studies show efficacy? Studies at the University of Vienna showed “substantial significance” in treating patients with COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease…the number four reason that people in the USA die!)(34) and severe sepsis (a condition which kills 50 percent of patients in hospitals who are inflicted with it, and yet, homeopathic treatment has been found to cut this death rate in HALF!).(35)
The vast majority of homeopaths throughout the world are medical doctors or some other licensed or certified health professional who practice family medicine and who see patients with varied acute and chronic ailments. Therefore, I personally challenge ANY skeptic of homeopathy to try to maintain a family practice and only dispense “sugar pills,” rather than real homeopathic medicines. My challenge is simple: while seeing a wide variety of children and adults with various acute and chronic problems, take them off all of their conventional drugs (with the exception of insulin and a small selection of drugs of “medical necessity”), and prescribe only sugar pills…for just one week.
When you consider that homeopaths do this for 52 weeks of the year, skeptics of homeopathy should not have any problem IF they think that homeopaths are only prescribing placebos. Let’s see how many patients complain, call you late at night expressing concern about the ineffectiveness of your “medicine,” and simply do not return for future health care. Any skeptic of homeopathy will be “cured” by this experience in humility. (For the record, I have offered hundreds of skeptics with this challenge, and not a single one has agreed to “prove” that placebo treatment can work in family medicine).
To clarify, I honor good skepticism, for a healthy skepticism seeks to truly explore a subject with knowledge and without arrogance. Further, good skepticism seeks to understand the wide body of evidence that it is necessary to evaluate to determine veracity of phenomena. It is the bad or ugly skepticism that breeds an unscientific attitude and that is simply a form of denialism, or in some cases, hyper-denialism.
Sadly, many of today skeptics are fundamentalists who epitomize a “closed mind.” Deepak Chopra said it so well when he asserted, “professional skeptics who are self-appointed vigilantes dedicated to the suppression of curiosity” (huffingtonpost, Dec 27, 2009). When such people do not want to learn from the past, do not even read the research (or only read those studies that confirm their own point of view), and maintain a high degree of arrogance, such “skepticism” isn’t skepticism at all: it is bad scientific thinking, it is an unhealthy attitude towards science, and it is a model for how not to learn.
One of the leaders of the skeptics is famed magician James Randi, who like many skeptics is seemingly skeptical of everything (except conventional medicine). He, however, has begun to lose respect from his colleagues and scientists by his skepticism of global warming.(36)
When the denialists assert and insist that homeopathy “cannot” work, I remind them that “science” and “medicine” are not just nouns but verbs…science and medicine are ever-changing. ..and what may be today’s medicine is tomorrow’s quackery, and what may today’s quackery may be tomorrow’s medicine. This is not a prediction; this is history. I encourage everyone and anyone who is seriously interested in the science and art of real healing to explore what homeopathic medicine has to offer. As Mark Twain once asserted in 1890, “you may honestly feel grateful that homeopathy survived the attempts of the allopathists [conventional physicians] to destroy it.”
REFERENCES:
(1) Murray CJL, Frenk J, Ranking 37th — Measuring the Performance of the U.S. Health Care System. New England Journal of Medicine. 362;2 January 14, 2010. http://content.nejm.org/cgi/reprint/NEJMp0910064.pdf?ssource=hcrc
(2) Ullman, Dana. Homeopathic Medicine: Europe’s #1 Medical Alternative. www.huffingtonpost.com/dana-ullman ; also: Fisher, Peter, and Ward, Adam, “Complementary Medicine in Europe,” British Medical Journal, July 9, 1994,309:107-110.
(3) Coulter HL, Divided Legacy: The Schism in Medical Thought. Volumes 2 & 3. Berkeley: North Atlantic, 1975, 1973. (Note: Dr. Harris Coulter, a world renowned medical historian who specialized in the history of homeopathic medicine, passed away in October, 2009.)
(4) Rothstein, W. Physicians in the Nineteenth Century. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972.
(5) Ullman Dana. The Homeopathic Revolution: Why Famous People and Cultural Heroes Choose Homeopathy. Berkeley: North Atlantic, 2007. http://www.HomeopathicRevolution.com
(6) Jonas WB, Kaptchuk TJ, Linde K, A Critical Overview of Homeopathy, Annals in Internal Medicine, March 4, 2003:138:393-399.
(7) Linde K, Clausius N, Ramirez G, et al., “Are the Clinical Effects of Homoeopathy Placebo Effects? A Meta-analysis of Placebo-Controlled Trials,” Lancet, September 20, 1997, 350:834-843. (In 1999, Linde acknowledged that some new research reduced the significance of this review, but he never said or implied that the significance was lost. In fact, in 2005, he sharply criticized the Shang review of homeopathic research.)
(8) Kleijnen J, Knipschild P, ter Riet G, “Clinical Trials of Homoeopathy,” British Medical Journal, February 9, 1991, 302:316-323.
(9) Ullman Dana. Homeopathic Family Medicine: Evidence Based Nanopharmacology. An ebook. www.homeopathic.com/ebook
(10) M. Weiser, W. Strosser, P. Klein, “Homeopathic vs Conventional Treatment of Vertigo: A Randomized Double-blind Controlled Clinical Trial,” Archives of Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery, August, 1998, 124:879-885.
(11) http://avilian.co.uk/ –This site provides references and links to many high quality basic science studies.
(12) Witt CM, Bluth M, Albrecht H, Weisshuhn TE, Baumgartner S, Willich SN. The in vitro evidence for an effect of high homeopathic potencies–a systematic review of the literature. Complement Ther Med. 2007 Jun;15(2):128-38. Epub 2007 Mar 28.
(13) Rey, L. Thermoluminescence of Ultra-High Dilutions of Lithium Chloride and Sodium Chloride. Physica A, 323(2003)67-74.
(14) Elia, V, and Niccoli, M. Thermodynamics of Extremely Diluted Aqueous Solutions, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 879, 1999:241-248. Elia, V, Baiano, S, Duro, I, Napoli, E, Niccoli, M, Nonatelli, L. Permanent Physio-chemical Properties of Extremely Diluted Aqueous Solutions of Homeopathic Medicines, Homeopathy, 93, 2004:144-150.
(15) International Journal of High Dilution Research. http://www.feg.unesp.br/~ojs/index.php/ijhdr
(16) HomBRex – a database on Basic Research experiments on Homeopathy. http://www.carstens-stiftung.org/ — a database of over 1,400 basic science studies, accessed 12-31-09.
(17) Calabrese, Edward. Hormesis: a revolution in toxicology, risk assessment and medicine. EMBO 5,2004: S37-S40. doi:10.1038/sj.embor.7400222.
(18) Calabrese EJ, Linda A Baldwin LA. Applications of hormesis in toxicology, risk assessment and chemotherapeutics. Trends in Pharmacological Sciences, Volume 23, Issue 7, 331-337, 1 July 2002. doi:10.1016/S0165-6147(02)02034-5.
(19) Demangeat, J.-L, Gries, P, Poitevin, B, Droesbeke J.-J, Zahaf, T, Maton, F, Pierart, C, Muller, RN, Low-Field NMR Water Proton Longitudinal Relaxation in Ultrahighly Diluted Aqueous Solutions of Silica-Lactose Prepared in Glass Material for Pharmaceutical Use, Applied Magnetic Resonance, 26, 2004:465-481.
(20) Ullman Dana. The Homeopathic Revolution: Why Famous People and Cultural Heroes Choose Homeopathy. Berkeley: North Atlantic, 2007. www.HomeopathicRevolution.com
(21) Prasad R. Homoeopathy booming in India. Lancet, 370:November 17, 2007,1679-80.
(22) A C Neilsen survey backs homeopathy benefits. Business Standard. September 4, 2007. http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/a-c-nielsen-survey-backs-homeopathy-benefits/295891/
(23) Shang A, Huwiler-Muntener K, Nartey L, Juni P, Dorig S, Sterne JA, Pewsner D, Egger M. Are the clinical effects of homoeopathy placebo effects? Comparative study of placebo-controlled trials of homoeopathy and allopathy. The Lancet. 366,9487, 27 August 2005:726-732.
(24) Ludtke R, Rutten ALB. The conclusions on the effectiveness of homeopathy highly depend on the set of analysed trials. Journal of Clinical Epidemiology. October 2008. doi: 10.1016/j.jclinepi.2008.06/015.
(25) Rutten ALB, Stolper CF, The 2005 meta-analysis of homeopathy: The importance of post-publication data. Homeopathy. October 2008, doi:10.1016/j.homp.2008.09/008
(26) EHM News Bureau. Condemnation for The Lancet’s Stance on Homeopathy. Express Pharma Pulse, October 6, 2005.
(27) MA Taylor, D Reilly, RH Llewellyn-Jones, et al., Randomised Controlled Trial of Homoeopathy versus Placebo in Perennial Allergic Rhinitis with Overview of Four Trial Series, BMJ (August 19, 2000)321:471-476.
(28) Reilly D, Taylor M, McSharry C, et al., Is Homoeopathy a Placebo Response? Controlled Trial of Homoeopathic Potency, with Pollen in Hayfever as Model. Lancet, 1985:881-6.
(29) Jennifer Jacobs, L. Jimenez, Margarita, Stephen Gloyd, “Treatment of Acute Childhood Diarrhea with Homeopathic Medicine: A Randomized Clinical Trial in Nicaragua,” Pediatrics, May 1994, 93,5:719-25.
(30) Jacobs J, Jonas WB, Jimenez-Perez M, Crothers D, Homeopathy for Childhood Diarrhea: Combined Results and Meta-Analysis from Three Randomized-Controlled Clinical Trials. Pediatrics Infectious Disease Journal. . 2003;22:229-234.
(31) Vickers A, Smith C. Homoeopathic Oscillococcinum for preventing and treating influenza and influenza-like syndromes. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2006, Issue 3. Art. No.: CD001957. DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD001957.pub3.
(32) M. Wiesenauer, R. Ludtke, “A Meta-analysis of the Homeopathic Treatment of Pollinosis with Galphimia glauca,” Forsch Komplementarmed., 3(1996):230-234.
(33) Baum M, Ernst E. Should we maintain an open mind about homeopathy? Am J Med 2009;122:973-974.
(34) Frass M, Dielacher C, Linkesch M, et al. Influence of potassium dichromate on tracheal secretions in critically ill patients. Chest 2005;127:936-941. (This journal is consider THE most respected journal in respiratory medicine.)
(35) Frass M, Linkesch M, Banyai S, et al. Adjunctive homeopathic treatment in patients with severe sepsis: a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial in an intensive care unit. Homeopathy 2005;94;75-80.
(36) http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/805-agw-revisited.html
(37) Twain, M. A Majestic Literary Fossil, Harper’s Magazine, February 1890, 80(477):439-444.
Dana Ullman, MPH, is America’s leading spokesperson for homeopathy and is the founder of www.homeopathic.com. He is the author of 10 books, including his bestseller, Everybody’s Guide to Homeopathic Medicines. His most recent book is, The Homeopathic Revolution: Why Famous People and Cultural Heroes Choose Homeopathy. Dana lives, practices, and writes from Berkeley, California.
Cultural Dwarfs and Junk Journalism: Ben Goldacre, Quackbusting and Corperate Science
February 9, 2010 by Will
Filed under Homeopathic Medicine
“Health fraud activists tend not to be scientists themselves, but journalists, philosophy lecturers, sociologists and others in ‘soft’ disciplines. They claim to be on the side of Science, but when results appear which contradict their prejudices, they try to ‘debunk’ them, heap abuse on them, and finally simply ignore them.”
Adams, Jad. Dirty tricks to discredit alternative medicine. i to i, April-June 1994.
(Please download the free e-book, you may want to settle down somewhere comfortable, enjoy!)
Cultural Dwarfs and Junk Journalism: Ben Goldacre, Quackbusting and Corperate Science
Placebo effect sizes in homeopathic compared to conventional drugs – a systematic review of randomised controlled trials
January 25, 2010 by Will
Filed under Homeopathic Medicine
