Homeopathy: myths and legends

The German physician Samuel Hahnemann started this branch of alternative medicine in 1796. It is based on highly diluited solutions, that have been found to be no more effective than common placebos. The basic idea of this alternative medicine is that "like kills like". It is also known as the law of similarities, according to which "whatever causes your symptoms, will also cure them".

Hahnemann also proposed that the effects of those treatments could be improved by diluting them in water, according to the "law of infinitesimal". If we consider caffeine, to improve its power diluting a single drop in 99 drops of water. By taking a drop of this solution and diluting it in other 99 drops of water we'll get a 2C solution, that is 99,99% water and 0,01% caffeine. Homeopathic remedies are usually sold between 6C and 30C dilutions, in little balls of sugar. It's fundamental to underline that at 12C we reach the Avogadro Limit, where there is a big probability that nothing is left of the original substance.


Furthermore Hahnemann proposed another theory, also known as the "law of succussion", according to which shaking the homeopatic remedy would increase its potency. In fact this process would allow water to retain memories of the original substance, because of its vibration. The idea that water has the ability to remember whatever has been dissolved before dilution was proposed by Jacques Benveniste. For this theory he was awarded two times the IGNOBEL prize

Thus homeopathy cannot be considered as a real science, and cannot compete with real medicine. The problem is that nowadays many people still use it, even though it has been proved to be useless. This isn't such a big deal if the treatments are used to cure a common cold or flu, but problems arise if it is used for more serious diseases. In the first situation it cannot cause great damages, because the disease will be defeated as well, even though it could take more time. If it is used as a replacement of real medicine in case of more severe diseases, it could eventually lead to death because of the loss of real treatments.

However it's important to underline that this pseudo-medicine has no medical effect at all. Sometimes people are healed by those treatments, but the ratio is not different from the ones of placebo effect. It could indeed be a useful treatment for psychosomatic diseases. In those cases, in fact, just the idea of taking a certain medicine could be useful to cure them. The main point is that every disease that can be cured by homeopathy could be cured by placebo effect, too, because the effective chemical an physical action are equal.


Nevertheless no one would ever even think about curing cancer by placebo effect....