I’ve always been sceptical and have seen this broadly advertised across Asia/developing countries. Would genuinely want to try and understand before dismissing. Thanks!
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Herbal/natural are the basis of all medicines for thousands of years. Now we have a medical industry that worth trillions and when they find a herbal/natural remedy, they commercialise it and then it becomes “medicine”.
Doesn’t mean all or even many of the herbal/naturals work or work better than a medicine, but unless it can be commercialise and sold, then you won’t hear anything good about it.
Homeopathy, for example, was dreamed up by German physician Samuel Hahnemann in 1796. Homeopathy has been tested in many double-blind, placebo-controlled studies and found to be no more effective than a placebo. In other words, homeopathy is just as effective as drinking water or taking a sugar pill.
There are herbal remedies that have been found to be safe and effective in double-blind, placebo-controlled studies – they are simply called “medicine”.
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Some of the other answers are true, but doesn’t get to the heart about *why* homeopathy became so widespread.
Think about the medicine at the time. Blood letting, purging, surgery without anesthesia or sanitization. The harm from these procedures often outweighed the benefits.
Along comes homeopathy. Homeopathy doesn’t treat any disease or exert any effect on the body (beyond placebo effect). At most generous, it provides some minimal hydration. However, it doesn’t make things worse.
Think about what you would do. You feel a bit under the weather; nothing horrible, but you definitely aren’t feeling well. Would you rather:
a) Go to your local doctor where he bleeds you and gives you a nasty concoction to make you vomit, or
b) Go to the homeopath who will give you a “medication” that ends up being entirely water.
We know today that, in most cases, all you need is time to let your body’s immune system sort everything out. So people in the 18th century were seeing people treated by homeopaths having similar (or better) results without the barbaric medical practices of the time.
We now know for sure that homeopathy doesn’t do anything, but thinking about the time in which it was developed, it makes more sense that it would gain traction.
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