Citation Needed - Homeopathy

Episode Date: September 22, 2021

Homeopathy or homoeopathy is a pseudoscientific[1][2][3][4] system of alternative medicine. It was conceived in 1796 by the German physician Samuel Hahnemann. Its practitioners, called homeopaths, believe that a substance that causes symptoms of a disease in healthy people can cure similar symptoms in sick people; this doctrine is called similia similibus curentur, or "like cures like".[5] Homeopathic preparations are termed remedies and are made using homeopathic dilution. In this process, the selected substance is repeatedly diluted until the final product is chemically indistinguishable from the diluent. Often not even a single molecule of the original substance can be expected to remain in the product.[6] Between each dilution homeopaths may hit and/or shake the product, claiming this makes the diluent remember the original substance after its removal. Practitioners claim that such preparations, upon oral intake, can treat or cure disease.[7] Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to support the show on a per episode basis, you can find our Patreon page here.  Be sure to check our website for more details. Find out more about Marsh's work by clicking here.

Yeah. Is it the same Wilson from Bottle Rocket? No, both Luke and Owen are in Bottle Rocket. Oh, okay. The one from Rushmore then? They're both in Rushmore too. Are you gonna let me tell you my Loki theory? Are you just gonna keep interrupting?

Well, so I figured if I kept naming movies, they were both in, I could avoid it until we got to the door. Yeah, okay. I'm so fucking stoked right now. This is great I could avoid it until we got to the door. Yeah, okay. I'm so fucking stoked right now. This is great. I know I can't wait to meet him. Hey guys.

What's up? Okay, so you know how I know that one guy who wrote that article about the producer of Black Adder's dog walker? Yeah, you never stop mentioning it. Okay, so I called him and I asked if he could ask the dog walker to ask the producer, to ask Stephen Fry's assistant, to ask Stephen if he'll be on our show So Stephen Fry is gonna be on our show. No, never got a hold of that guy. Anyway, I thought I would go to our clone guy and see if he could whip something up and he cloned Stephen Fry No, no, he did not not exactly. He said that without extensive blood tests and MRIs and other stuff blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,

he couldn't make an exact replica of Stephen, but he said with an old sample of Stephen's DNA. Yeah, and we got it from one of my many Stephen Fry used toothbrushes that I bought on eBay. So we did it. You have a collection of what now? Yeah, it's just so important. Yeah, I helped.

Anyway, yes, he did. Anyway, best he could do is make a clone that is one 10,000th of Stephen Fry. Yeah, he'll basically be one 10,000th as funny, charming, and witty, but it's Stephen Fry. So even one 10,000th, that's a lot, right? Yeah.

Oh, okay, and since today is homeopathy, you figured it followed the law of similars, and you've made a homeopathic Stephen Fry. I'll get it. I'll get it. Let me get it. We're having stop stop stop. Hi guys. Hi. Hello. It's home your pathic Stephen Frey. So great to meet you. Can I get a selfie? Take a selfie with me. Guys, I'm Michael Marshall from Skeptics of the K. Be reasonable podcast editor of the Skeptic magazine. You know, sometimes they don't perform proper seclusion on these home I'm Michael Marshall from Skeptics of the K, Be Reasel of Podcast, Editor of the Skeptic Magazine. You know, sometimes they don't perform proper

seclusion on these homeopathic clones. So I could give time a call, you could come over and give this guy a concussion, and we can see if that helps, you know. I don't, I mean, yeah, it's me, yeah, hi. So homeopathic's even pro, hello. Hello. Awesome, this is so awesome.

Hello and welcome to Citation Needed. Podcasts or you choose a subject, read a single article about unwikipedia and pretend we're experts because this is the internet. That's how it works now. I'm Cecil and I'll be your old timey doctor today, but I can't treat you alone. Let me introduce to you my regular cast, my three humors, blood yellow bile and flam, Eli Heathen Noah okay for the record I think it's weird to introduce us by the troubling stuff we find in our poop I know I never should have angered that witch in the woods

okay that's not the last time I'm not a witch but yeah she should not have done and also joining us tonight the editor editor of Skeptic Magazine UK, the host of Skeptic to the K and be reasonable, and then all around skeptical bad-ass Michael Marshall. I also want to point out in this scenario, your black bile. I never thought I'd be the one bringing document to this show. Oh, well done, sir. Hey patrons, you're the best. I never thought I'd be the one bringing document to this show. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha Homey apathy. All right, homey apathy. So, Mars, you've been fighting against this nonsense for years.

Tell us all about homey apathy. Okay. In order to understand the history of homey apathy, we first need to take a look at the history of actual medicine. No, no, no, no, no. Real stuff. Do magic water shaking. All right, all right, but don't worry, right? It doesn't mean I'm going to go all the way back to the Egyptians,

or the Etruscans, or the Mesopotamians here. You know, you'd have been asked, hold a stout, and essay going back that far. But mostly, it's because I don't really need to do that. For pretty much all of recorded history, medicine basically sucked. Before antibiotics, pretty much any infection could kill you, which is a problem because before we worked out germ theory, we didn't actually realize infections were a thing. I just want to point out homeopathic Stephen Fry over their hit as lack in knowledge behind my asshole. It's just no.

I'm probably some very interesting medical history out of Egypt. That's my job, Marsh. Okay, so back then, doctors were operating with pretty much zero understanding of how the human body actually worked. So their best attempt at treatment consisted of leeches, trepidation, drills and straight out bloodletting, which is a shame. Firstly, because too much blood has rarely proven to be the cause of any disease. Except in the case of my... Okay, no. Except in that case. And secondly, because of that whole,

even if you get a mild infection, you might die thing, that's a problem. Okay, does it seem like the leeches thing would have gone away at least a little bit faster? It took centuries of leeches not dying of rickets before they thought maybe that's not how it works. Shouldn't they get the thing? But I just, the leeches, people still pray

he's to this day. Yeah, so no. Well, you choose. People still pray heath to this day. Yeah, so no. No. Maybe we need to try to leech his heart. So that's basically how it was before the 1840s, when semilvice, snow, and pastor came along, figured out that germs were a thing, and started to get the grips with how diseases actually worked.

If you saw a doctor before that point, there was a pretty good chance of their treatments to amolate you to kill you than whatever was actually wrong with you. And people were understandably a bit worried in the face of all that medical, barbery, and butchery. And I mean those terms literally, because often the people playing doctors were actual barbers and actual butchers, i.e. the guys who had a reliable access to the sharp knives. And so, with that in mind, anyone who put forward a treatment that was less guaranteed to kill a patient was always going to turn some heads.

And so, the stage was set for one Christian Friedrich Samuel Hanerman. So, Hanerman took a job as a doctor in Germany in 1781, but he gave it his position three years later after becoming delusioned by all of the bloodletting and the ensuing constant stream of dead patients you've got to deal with from all the bloodletting. So he began looking into other ways that you could treat people. And he came across the work of a Scottish physician and chemist called William Cullen, who claimed that he was able to treat malaria by given patients Sincona, which is made from the bark of a Peruvian tree.

And Cullen claimed that Sincona worked because of the bitter taste that it had. But Hanuman, to his credit, called bullshit on this, pointing out that other things that tated bitter, didn't treat malaria. So he did what any good skeptic would do, he ate a whole load of Sincona. Okay, who said, but you don't have malaria this serious? Seriously? I'm serious. Now I don't have the hell out of malaria, motherfucker. Ah, the period of history when I'll eat whatever the fuck this is still I get to the

bottom of this medical condition was the better alternative to mainstream medicine. So, according to Hanuman, soon after he ate all that sincona, he became quite ill with joint pain, aches and a fever, which are also some of the symptoms of malaria. Wow. Coincidence? Yes. Yes, it was a lot of things caused those symptoms. But Hanuman didn't realise this, nor did he realise that sincona actually can treat malaria, but the way it works is because of a chemical contained within it that kills the parasite responsible for malaria.

And that chemical is called quinine, and it is still used today to treat malaria. And if you remember the intellectual dark web, also COVID, because the quinbit of quinine is the quinbit in hydroxychloroquine. Coincidence is a proud sponsor of anivax. Coincidence. Powering anivax. Quintetence. Powering Anivaxers since 1998. Oh, me. I can't believe Anivaxers got a sponsor before our podcast, guys.

What a bummer. Really? You really can't, you've made multiple, there's blood in my poop joke so far in this episode. Who, Shay? All right. Who, Shay? Still, Hanuman didn't know any of this, because how could he? This is before we knew that malaria is caused by parasites, or before we knew about parasites,

and it was fully 50 years before we even knew about germs. And so Hanuman came to a radical and completely incorrect conclusion. When you don't have malaria, taking something that treats malaria gives you malaria, and therefore, whatever causes your symptoms can be used to kill your symptoms. Why would you think that? Well, this has become the central principle of homie op. The formalventune deals like kills like always known as the lore of similars.

Okay, by the same logic, if you're not drowning and you breathe air, you start drowning. Yeah, I know there's so much more bullshit to get to but it is worth pausing to note that homie up at the Boyle's down to does no mean yes, then take no yes to cure your nose That is that is exactly it. So it's hey fever making your eyes Walter Here's an onion which also Sadness there you go is hay fever making your eyes water. Here's an onion, which also makes your eyes water. Why does Jesus cry, sir? It will cure your hay fever. Here's some sadness. There you go.

Can't sleep, take some coffee, you'll nod right off. You know, upset stomach, here's some actual arsenic that will cure what ails there. And I've been going to doubt, given that this is a comedy show, just be absolutely clear, I'm 100% serious about all of those. The homeopathic insomnia cure is actually coffee. And onion is genuinely a homopathic treatment for hay fever.

An arsenic really was and still is used by homopaths to treat digestive disorders, as well as ailments characterized by burning pain, aka syphilis. So despite what you might have surmised by this point, Harman wasn't an idiot. And even he could see that, for example, taking large amounts of coffee to cure in somebody, or taking large amounts of arsenic to cure your stomach problems would have some undesirable side effects. I still have some eyes, these are the idiot.

I know what you're saying. But, okay, whatever, smart science guy I'd go. Yeah, but he thought all these things, they'd have some undesirable side effects. Or as it happens, just regular effects, those are just effects that you're worried about there. So he realized that the large dose just worsens the condition, then what you need to do is dilute the remedies down, because according to his reasoning, diluting it would get rid of the harmful side effects while retaining the vitalistic energy of the original substance.

Vitalistic energy, right, yeah. Which he thought was a key to the actual treatment. And he actually believed that diluting in the medication made the medicine stronger. And the more dilute to the homeopathic remedy, the stronger it would be. And he called this the law of infinitesimals. And it continues to be one of the most important factors in homeopathy today. Okay, just doing a little quick math. So the ultimate homeopathic medicine would be literal nuisance.

It seems like you're on it. And you never know. It was something, right? Now, when we talk about dilutions. Yeah, talking about dilutions, not something boring, like at Trostkins Remesopotamians. That's very important. When we talk about dilutions, it is genuinely hard

to other state just how dilute harm and meant. So, let's say you wanted to make one of those classic, arsenic-based syphil cures, you know, for a friend. Keith is the friend. He is the friend. He is the friend. I don't have to become STD guy as like a bit. I don't like any of this.

So to do that with homey opathy, you know, you start with your single drop of arsenic and you drop that into nine drops of water to make a one x potency based on the Roman numeral for ten or you drop into 99 drops of water to make a one-c remedy based on the Roman numeral for 10, or you drop into 99 drops of water to make a 1c remedy based on the Roman numeral for 100. We'll call that step 1, but that's nowhere near strong enough. So if you take a single drop of your 1c remedy and put it into another 99 drops of water, you'll make a 2c remedy. And for those keeping count, that's about 1 drop of arsenic into 9801 drops of water.

And then you repeat that step again for 3C remedy, and again for 4C. And generally speaking, homypathic remedies would be administered at around 6C at the least dilute, which is the equivalent of 1 milliliter of arsenic in 941,480,149 litres and 149 liters of water. Jesus. Of 250 million gallons. And that's the weakest remedy. Yeah, for reference, the fountains at the Bellagio in Las Vegas only have 22 million gallons of water. And that's an 8.5 acre pool. She says,

11 Bellagios worth of water to one million. We're worth the vars. And yes, so actually the most homie-pathic cure isn't nothing, it's a drop of the ocean. That's how you get rid of that. It should be the homie apathic cure for all things, right? Yes, yeah, absolutely. Well, this is the thing that always strikes me out

homieopathy. You dilute things, you dilute a remedy into water, but presumably you need to find water that hasn't already had homie apathastophilic before. So you need entirely new water, which is difficult if you understand the water cycle to find water that is just Freshly generated from our cause it has the vitalistic energy of some of that I guess the rest of you. All right So you've got your 6C remedy the next level of remedies that will be commonly administered is a 12-C remedy

So six more steps of deletion beyond sixes. And because of the effects of exponential growth at this point, 12-C represents one drop of arsenic to 8.86 times 10 to the 23 drops of water. This is very dilute. In fact, this level of dilution introduces a new problem, because that drop of arsenic is made up of a discrete number of molecules. And if you carry on diluting it long enough, you're going to start running out to those molecules. They're going to get so spread you're not going to find them.

And it was actually a contemporary of Hanuman, the Italian scientist Amadei Avogadro, who figured this out, because in 1811, at the same time as Hanuman is doing all this homiopathy, Avogadro identified the number of particles in one chemical mole of substance, which is 6.02 times 10 to the power of 23. The upshot of this being, once you dial it to homie-pilot remedy to 12c, the chances that you're getting even a single molecule of arsenic in your final remedy becomes slim to none. Right, okay, Marsh, but your chances of being cured become slim to amazes right? And to be clear, that's a medium dilute on a fat remedy. Harlamann would also recommend going past 12c for another 18 dilutions, 18 levels of dilutions,

till you have a 30c remedy. Now for a 30c dilution, to guarantee that you definitely got even one single atom of arsenic in your final remedy. You need access to a body of water, the size of the sun, and then another nine suns. The chances of finding that single atom of arsenic in a 30-C remedy are as remote as finding a true fact in a citation needed essay written by Elon Musk. Or it's like, what's another good example? It's like the chances of finding... John the Nay, no.

Brand itself. Okay, okay. Anyway, we can all agree, it's very unlikely. But even if you did, bear in mind, you'd only have a single act of arsenic, which is too small to do anything to you. And even then, arsenic wouldn't actually be useful treating the thing that's wrong with you in the first place.

Right, yeah, exactly. So he found the wrong cure, but he failed to give it to you. And even then, Arsnek wouldn't actually be useful treating the thing that's wrong with you in the first place. Right. Yeah, exactly. So he found the wrong cure, but he failed to give it to you. So he's packing it. Now, again, despite what you might be thinking at this point, Hanama was not a stupid man. You know, he realized he needed right? But he realized you couldn't give the Arctic undiluted, and even though he'd regularly use dilutions of up to 300 sea, 300 sea, I'm not gonna do the maths on that one. He did realize that... I'm a guy who's plumber with all of that.

Water. But he did realize that diluting arsenic into load and load of water, risks losing out on what made the Arctic special. And so he came up with a third law, which is the third and final law that homie paths would take as gospel for two centuries. The best comment I saw about dilutions is from Shiloh Madison. He said, if homie apathy is real, then dumping those somber bin Laden's corpse in the ocean

just cured the world of terrorism. So let's talk about seclusion. So cussion is based on the idea that vitalistic force in any particular substance is all about vibrations and energy, living things have a vitalistic force. And so when you introduce the original substance into the water as you dilute it,

you can get the water to vibrate the same way and retain the same energy as the thing if you smack it around a bit. And it's honestly, it's not that clear how much smacking around is involved. It's right. Because like some places say you need to bang the container of remedy 10 times, some say it's's gotta be 10 times through each axis on all three axes. Some say you need to bang it against a wooden surface or a leather band book. Some even specified has to be a bind. All right, all right, hear me out.

We bang it one bejilience of a time against a quark of a wood molecule. I feel like that's gonna be the powerful shit right there. But the idea here is that if you beat it enough, the water will just remember what you want it to. Yeah, my dad's belt helped me remember not to make any noise while he was sleeping at all. Oh, I think so.

I think so. You were just being secused. That's all it was. It was not childish. But this process is called potentization and it helped Hanuman explain how it worked even once there was no arsenic left. The water that used to have arsenic in it

retains the vitalistic memory of the arsenic and you can secust that energy into the next water, the next dilution, like a molecular game of telephone. The same principle has been used by homopaths genuinely to restock their pill supplies, because what they do is they take one of their homopathic pills, put it in with a load of blank sugar pills, and then secust the whole thing, so the vibrational memory passes from the homie-opli pill in the rest of the bottle. Oh, god, what the fuck?

They fucking add one magic pill to a bunch of sugar pills and shake it like a morocco. What do I think these pills are? The Delta variant? Come on! That's ridiculous. Don't be silly, Cecil. Homie-opathic pills aren't made in a lab. But that's not good.

That's interesting. That's how Homey Opera is made. Or at least that's one way Homey Opera is made. It's not actually my favorite way of making Homey Opera because when you think about it, when you do it that way with successive dilutions, one pot in the next pot, one flask at the next flask, it takes so much time and effort and

crockery to make a remedy like that. And if you want to get to the really strong stuff, you know, the 300 C remedies, it's going to take forever to put a drop of the time into a beacuv, 99 drops of water, 300 times. But in 1829, there was a Russian government official and homeopath, Carl Semyon Korsakov, who invented a way of speeding this whole process up and his process is amazing. Because Corsicov realized that when you take a drop of arsenic and you add it into 99 drops of water and then you shake that mixture just to secuse it and then you, at that point, if you just pour the mixture entirely away and then turn the flask up again, you're left with little droplets clinging to the inside of the flask and those droplets, he reasoned,

are probably about 1% of the mixture. All you then need to do is fill that flask up with another 99 drops of water, shake it again, pour it away again, and you'll be left with 1% of that on the inside of the flask, but it's too seuremonies. So all you need to do to create the highest portancies of homie-pathic preparations was keep filling your flask, shaking it, and pouring its contents away. And they call that the Corsicaovian method of dilution. And I call that Rin-Set. Yeah, that's it. Yeah, I feel like the unspoken fourth rule is, stop being so exact, guys, it's all bullshit

anyway. It's like people asking me for a dry martini with them, like, but like a billion times over again, homeopathically with them, like sprayed it in and poured back out. Fuck you. So that's homeopathy. You know, it's the art of taking something

that doesn't do what you think you can do, diluting it until it's no longer there, and then calling it out. Yeah. That's, well that's fucking stupid, man, for sure. Oh, yeah, no, Cecil, it absolutely is. But it was still better than seeing a doctor in the early 1800s. Oh, man, I'm glad we left that in the past, then, yeah.

Yeah, about that. Okay. All right, that sounds like there's a lot more to this story. So we're gonna take a break for a little apropos of nothing. Hi, I'm Eli Posnik. And I'm Michael Marshall. Do you feel... eh? Has real medicine failed to hand you a perfect cure for what ails you in at any given moment in your life?

Do you have more money than sense? Then why not spin the Wheel of Alternative Medicine? Each spin of the Wheel of Alternative Medicine is guaranteed to provide you with a confident charlatan dressed as much like a doctor as his legal in your area Complete with diagnostic tools that you've never seen before But without all of the discomfort of actual diagnostic tools, ooh, a caliper! That's right. Plus, everything on the Wheel of Alternative Medicine is presented as ancient or Eastern in origin.

Oh wow, that plays right into my innate racist belief in the magical minority. It sure does, and if you won't tell that most of this stuff was invented by white people in the early 19th century, we sure won't. WEEK! The Wheel of Alternative Medicine. What's the harm? Oh my knack! Oh shit, sorry, that happens on non-zero percent of the time. Yeah, quite a bit actually, yeah.

So yeah, statistically, it happens a lot. I guess I'll have to make Christian movies now. You do, fff now. You do. You do. I do. Okay, so before the break, Marsh was telling humanity kept multiplying by zero, hoping for a different outcome. What happened next, Marsh? So, as you can imagine,

while homieopathy doesn't kill people, the way medicine did in 1800 It isn't actually effective because those dilute proportions don't contain anything. That's one of the reasons, but yeah, okay Sometimes the human body does just get better on its own and in every case of someone feeling a homieopathy was actually successful The person taking it would have had exactly the same success without it. Because at best your body just fix itself. But at worst, you delay real treatments and your condition gets worse. And that starts to really matter once real medicine starts to get its shit together and starts coming up with things like penicillin, hygiene, medications, vaccinations

and treatments that actually work. Because even the homeyopathy doesn't work, that hasn't stopped gaining a surprising amount of popularity to this deer. And it's been exported all across the world. Homie Pats like to say that homie up the is the second most popular form of medicine, which it's a bit like jumping out of a plane with the most popular alternative to a parachute. That popularity means nothing when the ground

is coming up to meet you fast. That's Paul Walker's last words. Oh, too soon. I mean, after real medicine, second place is fake medicine. That's true. It's a weird bread. It's colloidal silver metal foil.

There's everything. That was like, wrong. It's the second best thing after a right. Yeah. I mean, it's up. So obviously, I recognize this in American podcast. There is zero point we talk about anywhere else in the world before I've told you about America.

Thank you. More skills. The thing is, you start in Tuscany or Iraq, people call you an arsehole, Marcell. Yeah. That's true. Be careful. So the first homie-opathy school in America

opened in 1835. And within a decade, the American Institute of Homie-opathy was established. And then by 1900, the American Institute of Homey Opity was established. And then by 1900, the USA had 22 homeopathic colleges and over 15,000 homeopathic practitioners. Okay, serious question. How do you fail one of these programs? Right?

What possible measure of failure can there be at unstandardized nothing? No, again, because this was America, the industry blossomed essentially untouched by the hand of regulation, because freedom is important, even if it's the freedom to sell sugar pills to sick people. In fact, in 1938, Royal S. Copeland, a New York senator, wrote an exemption for homey opera, the in-2 FDA regulations stipulating that homey paths do not have to apply for a new drug application with the FDA for new solutions.

Nor do they have to provide any information about their efficacy or safety, or for that matter, test them at all. And he went on to write the only authority the FDA has over homeyopathy is to ensure safety in the manufacturing process. And we'll put a pin in that for now, but suffice to say 70 years later homeyopathy is an estimated $3 billion business in the US. Wow. Okay, I feel like a homeopath went to the FDA office

in like 1938 and spent 72 hours pouring out beakers over and over and they're like, yeah, fine, all your stuff is good for whatever. That's ridiculous. Meanwhile, things in the UK weren't a whole lot better either. 19th century British society had a lot in common with German society and we shared a lot of things, including most notably a royal family. And a hatred of Jews.

And the hatred of Jews. So it was a little surprise then that when Germany caught a case of... The little pushback on that, okay. No, no. It was a disaster. So it was a little surprise that when Germany caught a case of homey-opathy, it quickly infected the UK. And one of the people responsible for that spread of homey-opathy across the channel was Dr. Fredrick Foster Harvey Quinn, who studied with Hanuman before founding the London Homey-Pathic

Hospital in 1849. He was also the sexy lady Joker sister. He was sitting in the way ahead of the story here, Eli? And after the London one, other homopathic hospitals are soon followed suit, including in 1887, here in Liverpool, where I live, which had a homopathic hospital for over a century, and we'll put another pin in that for now. I don't know if you wanted to put a lot more of the pin in it, though. It's a homopathic hospital, it's a garage where they power wash you and you go home.

Oh my god, what the fuck is it? Dr. Quinn was a prominent figure in London society and he was very well connected, having been physician to Queen Victoria's father in law, Prince Leopold, the father of Prince Albert. He was a personal friend of Charles Dickens and he was Godfather to one of Dickens' children and the Dickens' connection is really interesting to me, because it appears that Dickens thought Hormyopathy was complete bullshit, or at least initially. In 1837, Dickens was right in a styrical article for a monthly magazine called Bentley's Missilani, and he wrote about a fictitious meeting of the Mudford Society for the Advancement of Everything, which was very clearly porcing fun at the recently founded British Association for the Advancement of Science.

And in the notes he wrote of their invented first meeting, Dickens wrote about the discoveries of one professor Muff, who demonstrated, quote, convincing proof of the wonderful efficacy of the system of infinitesimal doses. And Dickens described how Muff dispersed three drops of rum through a bucket of water and then requested a drunken to drink the whole thing. Three drops of liquid per month was either great grandfather of Ben Shapiro. LAUGHTER

What was the result, writes Dickens, before he had drunk a quart, he was in a state of beastly intoxication, and five other men were made dead drunk with a remainder. And then the fictional professor in Dickens' story goes on to explain how the man could be sobered up with a 25th part of a teaspoon of soda water, and how poppers of the workhouse could be adequately fed using just a 15th of a part of a grain of rice.

Or you just take the leftover boiling water and you like punch it ten times, right? Remember. So that was the UK then. Fast forward a century and the UK comes to the realization that it is completely barbaric to let poor people die simply because they can't afford medicine which is realization I'm sure the USL will come to in any day now guys I'm sure you're just you're on the verge of a Intel We're solving that problem a different way over here Yeah, you try to work it out in payroll is what you're doing

And thus the National Health Service was born but by by this point, Homiopthi was pretty well established in British society and had even gained royal patronage. So it was almost inevitable that the board tasked with figuring out what a National Health Service should cover would suggest that Homiopthi be included. And so it was that UK came to have taxpayer funded Homiopathic hospitals in London, Glasgow, Bristol, Tundraich Wells, and Liverpool, where I live. And while the homeopathy that was available on the NHS was almost certainly for self-limiting conditions, off the management of chronic conditions,

where the best thing that we could do is nothing. Private practicing homeopaths have been found claiming to treat cancer, prevent malaria, cure autism. And that's just the stuff they've told me, that's just the stuff they've tried to sell me personally. They generally suggest inert sugar pills are the solution to every health crisis you could possibly face. Well, not including themselves, but yeah, I'm pretty much right. I'm not diabetes.

Okay, so hard truth here, though, back in up a little bit. Given the number of people we've got who refuse to take the free medicine when it's offered to them, I don't know that America deserves a national health service. Oh, that's so true. That's probably good. I'm going to the dick-sporting good to get my healing from now on. Jim, I'm proud to be in a man. I think it's about time we start pulling out some of those pins you can put again. And to do that we need to deal with the elephant in the room, or at least the skeptic on the Wikipedia page. Because I know the pitch of this show is we read a single Wikipedia page and became experts

on it. But I think, well, I presume this the first time that Wikipedia page has actively referenced the person writing the essay. There wasn't a section on the action park Wikipedia page where they made a passing reference to the time someone kicked Heath in the stomach so hard, he shot himself and threw up at the same time. So nice.

Really? You too. Sorry, it's in the contract. I can't help it. With whom? Your contract? With Eli. With Eli.

Was I not supposed to sign that? I also vomited. Whatever you said didn't even make sense. But as you come to the sections of Wikipedia page, that start to discuss criticism of homeopathy and the push back against it in the UK, you start to get references to my work. So it talks about the time a campaign group called 1023 after that Avogadro number,

highlighted the lack of active ingredients in homeopathy by taking large overdose as altogether. And it talked about how the NHS was recommending against prescribing homeyopper in 2017, which came after my charity brought a legal challenge to homeopathic prescriptions to get that recommendation in place. And it talked about how the Bristol Homey Pathic Hospital closed in 2015, it doesn't mention the Liverpool Homey Pathic Hospital, which closed a year later, or what brought about those closures. And while my modesty precludes me from talking about any of that in detail,

Thelwood obviously didn't prevent me from bringing up in passing naturally. Right. There's one bit on the Wikipedia page that I literally only noticed while writing this essay, and I really do want to mention it. Okay, listen into a British guy humble brag about his lifelong victorious campaign against homeopathy

as basically skeptic jerk off encouragement. Pretty sure it's called jerk off instruction, Cecil. Are you getting a salsa version? What? Eli, when you reach me in Cecil's age, you kind of need somebody giving you like a, you can do it now and again. And that's what we need.

Yeah, exactly. I go to Boomer porn sites. Thank you. Just a girl and a thong, buy in a house. So on the on the Wikipedia page under the heading, plausibility of dilutions, which is the bit that talk about the homeopalic overdoses I was doing. There's this image that illustrated diluted remedy. And the image that they've chosen is a 15C remedy of lustram palustra, which

struck me as a bit odd, because 15C is an unusual dilution, it's not a normal dilution that's often used. And also lustram palustra isn't a very common remedy, but the caption below I think explains it, because it says it's a homopathic preparation made from Marshti. And I think that might be an Easter egg about me. Interesting. Mars, just wait till you see the page about Scotland, they are huge fans. So one of the UK homie updates taken the kind of bruising no amount of Dalutadana could heal. It does remain popular elsewhere in the world. It's absurdly common in its native Germany. Doctors are routinely taught homeopathy universities

and most pharmacies sell it. The homeopathy industry in Germany is worth something like 650 million euros a year. And about 60% of Germans said they've tried it according to a survey in 2014. Though it's worth pointing out that tried it might just be, I was given it once, it was useless, I've never bothered again. Yeah, okay, also six out of 10 Germans tried it might just be I was given it once it was useless. I've never bothered again. Yeah, okay

also six out of ten Germans tried it not the greatest ad slogan Homeopathy is also a four hundred million dollar industry in France, but positively in the last year They removed homeopathy from their health system coverage at least. Yeah, not at all fun fact. They don't have a special, this is bullshit marking on homeopathy in France. So if you're there and you're sick, you gotta fucking Google Translate is this real anytime you buy medicine

and hope the pharmacist knows what the fuck you're doing. Yeah. Okay, I mean, but the French word for homeopathic is just homeopathic in a French accent. So I feel like you could just do that with a question mark. I know I'm too late now, but maybe the next time. What is this? A wine bar where the waitresses, my French, is much better than he'd get out of here.

I'm not just, we're just gonna make up new stories in the middle of the show. We're just gonna make things up that happened that aren't real. That's fine. That's fine. So over in India, ridiculous. Very likely as a holdover from British colonial rule, homeopathy is really popular.

The Indian government has a department of Ayurveda, Yorgon naturopathy, Unaani, Siddha, and homeopathy, which actively recommended homeopathy be used prophylactically for COVID-19. Oh. That my department is normally the eye-use department, which is really irritating, because Ayurveda, Yorgoran naturopathy,

which they hide behind the wide to get the, the acronym to work on this, isn't to work. Anyway, that's not the worst thing about the department, but it is irritating. But this, this is part of a tradition of homypats, all over the world claiming their treatments could be used as vaccines, which they call no swords.

And here in the UK, the society homopats recently lost their government accredited status over their failure to stop their members from spreading anti-vaccine misinformation during the pandemic. Wow, if those homopats really want freedom of speech, they should become US Congress people. Yeah, they don't want real work.

I like that as a planet. We've tried to call timeout on like all the bullshit for just a second, right? Just a second while we get the plague under control. And universally the answer is, no. No, no, no, no timeouts. No timeouts. So that no-sode vaccine point, that's pretty notable

because homypats have been known to explain that homyopathy works via the same kinds of mechanisms as vaccines. In the sense that you give the body a little of something to help it work out how to fight it, and then the body can then fight it when it sees the thing later on. And I've even seen homopathy claim that vaccines are actually an unrefined form of homopathy. So yeah, vaccines, they're just a form of homopathy

where they haven't gotten the reference, they haven't refined it down to a vitalism force just yet. Which is obviously bullshit. Vaccines give you a weakened or dead bit of virus. They're just a form of homiopathy where they haven't got the refiner, they haven't refined it down to a vitalism force just yet Which is obviously bullshit. Vaccines give you a weakened or dead bit of virus or a certain protein specific to that virus Whereas in homiopathy, you're getting a zero amount of coffee to treat your insomnia And again, this is a real thing. You're getting water which was once introduced to a sample of the Berlin wall In order to treat separation anxiety. Shut the fuck up, shut up, shut up, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I once saw listed a remedy that was made from uranium, which the homie path explained was taken, was made by taking a flask of water into a nuclear power plant and holding it near one of the machines.

And the plant in question run on plutonium. Okay, that's amazing. But the plutonium remembers being uranium, right? And it got secust by neutrons, and now it's plutonium. You're being up too, smart. You're being like, say that, that's how it works. Hey, I don't want homeopats to get into nuclear power plants. If the homeopats has gotten to nuclear power plant,

something has gone terribly wrong. Okay, it depends on where in your nuclear. There are places in a nuclear power plant where that would mean something went terribly right, Eli. I'm just gonna get it. Yeah, that's true. I'm just gonna get it. We can get it any more specific.

Okay, there's one more pin I do need to take out before I wrap up. And that brings us neatly back to the United States. So remember that line about the FDA only having jurisdiction over the safety and the manufacturing process? Well, in 2011, the UK's biggest homie-oppy manufacturer, Nelson's tried to get a license to export their sugar pills

into the US. And Nelson's used to supply some of the homopathic hospitals in the UK, and they make most of the homie-oppy of the U.S. on saline boots, which is the biggest pharmacy chain in the UK. But because they were exporting to the US, the FDA had to examine their manufacturing process in detail, and then the report on what they found is genuinely extraordinary.

Podcast listener, Marsh has put a link to this report in our notes, and not since the fucking Mueller report, have I seen an adult trying to keep chill while being like, oh bad, no bad, bad, bad, bad, no bad, bad. It's superb. It's my favorite FDA report. Because first of all, the FDA reports that the glass vials that Nelson's would use to sell their products in, they'd occasionally break on the assembly line. And the resulting glass fragments would then find their way into the other vials,

which risked a customer swallowing that fragment of broken glass. And you're as my opium. Yeah, though, right? Yeah. The Nelson response was to say, no customer ever complained about it. Which is a bit like a restaurant saying it's totally fine to have rats running on the kitchen because no customers ever noticed a hair in their food.

Oh, it's fine. Don't worry about it. Right, right. No customers are a complaint about glass of the bottles. Like, yeah, I sure. There was one that tried to complain, but blood just shot out his mouth like I found so we'd tell him to a no comment. That's a no comment, that one doesn't count.

That's not even the worst bit of the report. There's other bits that get even better, because when it comes to how Nelson's were doing that secussing, you know, the shake and the vibrating of the pills. The FDA found, quote, that one out of every six bottles did not receive the dose of active homopathic drug solution

due to the wobbling and vibration of the bottle assembly during the dose of active homopathic drug solution due to the wobbling and vibration of the bottle assembly during the filling of the active ingredient. The active ingredient was instead seem dripping down the outside of the vial assembly. And they explained that Nelson's lacked controls to ensure that the active ingredient is delivered to every bottle. Okay, but like technically everyone lacks the controls to keep one echinacea molecule in the right place. Yeah, that's a weird way to describe it. How you're stupid. So according to the FDA, for the biggest homiopathy manufacturer in the UK, one in six of the vials of homopathic pills they were selling never actually included any homiopathy at all and nobody ever noticed the difference

Right, right, right, and revenue is currently $76 million a year Oh, man. And look, when your main ingredient is nothing and you still cheat one in six year customers out of it Robbidoo and profit are super similar numbers Hey, Marsh, do you want to switch sides? You're a... You're a... You're a... You're a... You're a... You're a... You're a... You're a... You're a...

You're a... You're a... You're a... You're a... You're a... You're a... You're a... You're a...

You're a... You're a... You're a... You're a... You're a... You're a... You're a... You're a... You're a... You're a... You're a... You're a... is a tremendously silly idea about medicine that predates the discovery of germs and defies many of the fundamental laws of physics, chemistry and biology. Not only does it still

exist today, but it hasn't changed its fundamental principles, one I ought to in over two centuries, and the people who practice it act like that's a good thing. While the sugar pills that bring in billions of dollars in profit worldwide aren't completely ineffective, homie-opathy is not harmless, it's killed people and it continues to kill people. Some of them buy an action, thinking that they were treating their illness when they're really just watering it down with sugar pills and tap water. And others have been injured and killed through negligence when homeypats include real substances in their pills, either through contamination or through improper dilution.

Homeyoppah is still harming people, monetarily and physically, more than 150 years after Charles Dickens wrote a whole piece about how it's complete bullshit. And if you had to summarize what you learn in one sentence, Marsh, what would it be? When it comes to homie-opathy, nothing is as good. And are you ready for the quiz? I am positively potentized for it.

All right, Marsh. I couldn't help but notice that Wikipedia left out that you have a series of dedicated fan sites created by some secret admirer out there. Which of these fan sites is your favorite? Hey, bigjewzymancow.com. I don't remember why I did that one. ConspiracyBloorUpor.com.

See, skepticaTheYear.com, D, Marsh did COVID.com, or E, Eliant Cecil Besties5Ever.com, the wedding website complete with guest book I made using a picture of Cecil and his actual wife in 2018. I'm going to have to say B, ConspiracyBloorUpor.com, because I think this wife in 2018. I'm gonna have to say B, conspiracyploreupper.com, because I think this is the first time I'm hearing about that one, and I've yet to see what's on it. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. By the way, I just checked big jizzymancow.com. That goes, yes, straight to your Wikipedia page. That's real. Yeah, pretty much. Fantastic, yep. So, you know, you can streamline the process

if you want to tell people about it. All right. Mars, I got one for you too. So, you know, you can streamline the process if you want to tell people back. Alright. Um, Marsh, I got one for you too. Which of the following is the best song from the anti-homiopathy musical that you are writing? Is it a memory? E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E- Let's have Jupiter. Patecate. Patecate. Patecate. Patecate. Patecate. Patecate.

Patecate. Patecate. Patecate. Patecate. Patecate. Patecate. Patecate. Patecate.

Patecate. Patecate. Patecate. Patecate. Patecate. Patecate. Patecate. Patecate.

Patecate. Patecate. Patecate. Patecate. Patecate. Patecate. per but is incorrect not that you were looking for D. Oh, it's a grand. You're supposed to be right. But yeah, I think the thing to work you we were correct. But yeah, it's okay, you can be more right now. Okay. All right, Marsh, what's the name of Samuel Henneman's biography? A secret of my sacus. The old man in the 15c or 6c, water shit down. Oh my, water shit down is amazing.

That's amazing. It's got to be water shit down. It's correct. Absolutely. Okay, I got one more for you, Marsha. People who promote homeopathy in the modern day should be forced to use other outdated medical practices too, especially A, trepination, which for those unfamiliar involves boring holes in the skull and then boring more holes in the skull B, the electro shock anti-impedance belt, which is a real thing that

involves electrified rods that were inserted. Yep, there. Yep, see the Babylonian skull care, which included sleeping next to a human skull, which one would lick seven times before bed and seven times in the morning or D. What? Lobotomy. I'm going to say the Babylonian skull cure, because I assume that didn't work, because once you're already a skull, no matter of licking is bringing you back to life. I think that's never going gonna work as a solution. Oh, I'm sorry. It was a combination of A and D Sorry, that's good. Good try though. Good try. No, I was more right and Marsh was more wrong to know where you went

Oh, okay, cool. Well then I will I will announce heath is the next essay us then we both get a victory Game on excellent. Excellent. All right and then we both get a victory. Game on. Excellent. Excellent. All right. Well, I got something real bad coming up. I got something real bad coming up. C2. C2. I will for Noah.

Heath, Eli and Marsh. I'm Cecil. Thank you, Frank Owes, today. We'll be back next week, and by then Heath will be an expert on something else. Well, I mean. Between now and then, listen to Marsh's other shows. Be reasonable and skeptics to the K. And if you'd like to help keep the show going, you can make a per episode donation at patreon.com

So, a citation pod or leave a suffice, our view, and really can. And if you'd like to get in touch with us, check out past episodes, connect to us on social media, or check the show notes. Be sure to check out citationpod.com. Come on, Marsha, we don't even have to sell anything. We could just sell other people's stuff. Eli, no, I'm not switching over to the other side. But with that money, you'd have so much time for...

You know, that stuff that you like? Right, and what is that Eli? You know, we've been friends for six years. What do I do for fun? I know that. You? You like to hang out with your wife, you love your wife? I know that you. You like to hang out with your wife, you love your wife? Okay, and what's my wife's name? Piccolo. Yeah I'm going, I'm going.

God, come on, think of all the nice stuff you could get for Piccolo man. He's gone. Thank you.