Homeopathic Remedy Web Site

[BPSCG]

I tried the "free amusement" Randi recommended in this week's commentary and plugged in some symptoms I had about 20 years ago, including night sweats, weight loss, and swollen glands.

Here's what the homeopathic remedy finder recommended:The homeopathic remedy which best matches your symptoms is Pulsatilla Nigricans. Of your symptoms, it applies to these:

chill;
chill; night; ;
chill; in bed; ;
chill; with perspiration;
chill; during sleep; ;
chill; on waking; ;
fever;
perspiration; night; ;
perspiration; night; during sleep; ;

Okay, that seems to tell me what I need to know. Guess I'll go out and get some of that ol' Pulsatilla Nigricans.

Uh-oh, not so fast...However, it is not relevent to the following. If any of them are central to your case, you should consult the remedy grid (click next again).
chill; night; in bed; ;
chill; external; ;
chill; external; night; ;
chill; external; night; during sleep; ;
chill; while lying down; ;
chill; with perspiration; becomes colder from sweat;
perspiration; night; on waking; ;
perspiration; in bed; sweat and chilliness on getting warm in bed;
perspiration; cold; clammy sweats with chill; I'm so confused.

I suppose I could have just gotten the Pulsatilla Nigricans anyway, on the theory that it's homeopathic, so it couldn't possibly hurt. Thing is, I went to a real doctor and found out that while Pulsatilla Nigricans wouldn't have hurt, taking it instead of real medicin would have. Seems I had Hodgkins' disease.

FWIW, I did try plugging "Hodgkins' disease" into the search engine and it drew a blank.

[Rolfe]

I've tried very hard to get homoeopaths to answer the question of how they can possibly tell if someone who comes to them has a serious disease that needs real medicine, but I've never had a satisfactory reply.

Barb, for example, says she only sees people who have already seen their own doctor and are on any medication that they need, and Leela and David Johnson similarly declare that they only work with people who are already on real medicine and they simply offer a little extra je ne sais quoi. (OK, and they claim to be able to reduce the dose of the real medicine needed to control the condition, another testable claim they never allow to be tested, but there you go.)

On the other hand there are homoeopaths like Snoopy and Divina who insist that real medicine is harmful, and people should see a homoeopath first, before they've been "poisoned, burned, mutilated and releived of their lives savings" by real doctors. Snoopy backtracked real fast when she was cornered on this (if I fixed the link in my sig you could see how) and started declaring that getting a proper diagnosis was essential, but how she could square this with the fact that homoeopaths don't believe in diagnosis in the first place I don't know.

Conversely, the Pakistani crowd (Syed, I think) kept insisting that the real treatment would have killed the patient and only homoeopathy could have saved her, even after it had been shown that the problem was somehting which would be fatal without steroid treatment. Interestingly, another thread about the same time referred to homoeopathic treatment of miscarriages. In that, another Pakistani homoeopath lamented the fact that after they'd all agreed on the right remedy for the miscarrying woman, she'd gone to her gynaecologist, who'd forbidden her to go anywhere near these dangerous quacks again (I paraphrase!).

I think the whole thing is based on the assumption that most people have enough sense of self-preservation only to mess around with the woo-woos when there's either nothing really wrong, or as an extra on top of real treatment for chronic disease. This is probably true most of the time, it's just a shame that now and again someone comes along who believes all the hype, and tragedy ensues.

Rolfe.