When I hear someone extolling the virtues of homeopathy, I am often reminded of a quotation from the TV show 30 Rock. “There are many kinds of intelligence,” Jack Donaghy tells a particularly stupid employee. “Practical, emotional … and then there is actual intelligence, which is what I’m talking about.” Similar, and perhaps correlating, are the many kinds of medicine. Natural, complementary, alternative, homeopathic, herbal, traditional. And then there is actual medicine, which works.
It is strange that homeopaths can still find employment in 2023, but somehow they do. In 1853, Queen Victoria’s doctor was already calling the practice “an outrage to human reason”. In the following 170 years it has been debunked repeatedly and comprehensively. After all, its principles run in complete opposition to science, based as they are on “curing like with like” – an extract of raw onion, say, to treat watery eyes – “strengthening” by process of dilution, and shaking it all up to “promote quantum entanglement”.
