More Fun with Homeopath Dana Ullman, MPH(!)

[steenkh]

Rolfe, you will notice that James/Dana ignores anybody he can't answer.

I think he has addressed quite a lot of people that he could not answer: it is the questions that he consistently ignores.

 

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

I think he has addressed quite a lot of people that he could not answer: it is the questions that he consistently ignores.

Yeah, apparently I'm not properly evolved. Yet, his superior intellect has not enabled him to answer poor old monkey's little questions.

"Bloody hell," said Majikthise, "now that is what I call thinking. Here Vroomfondel, why do we never think of things like that?"

"Dunno," said Vroomfondel in an awed whisper, "think our brains must be too highly trained Majikthise."

Which is JamesGully, Vroomfondel or Majikthise? We should be told.

 

[Cuddles]

Quote mine this: "James Gully is both a hypocrite and intellectually dishonest."

"James Gully is honest."

Like that you mean?

 

[Mojo]

I demand that he is Vroomfondel!

Although he could just as well be Majikthise. after all, what they were demanding was a total absence of solid facts...

 

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

and I think he demands rigidly defiined areas of doubt and uncertainty except where any doubt or uncertainty might impinge on the validity of homeopathy.

 

[fls]

Originally Posted by kieran
Quote mine this: "James Gully is both a hypocrite and intellectually dishonest."

"James Gully is honest."

Like that you mean?

To be fair, maybe like this:

"James Gully is...'honest."

Or:

"James Gully is both...intellectual' [and] 'honest."

Or:

"James Gully is both...'rite and intellectually 'honest."

Linda
(This is kinda fun. I can see why Ullman does it.)

 

[JJM]

What do you want me to say? Do you want me to say that homeopathy has been proven as a valid therapeutic system?"

There, he said it everyone: "homeopathy has been proven as a valid therapeutic system" Plus, he loves faith healing ...

 

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

Yep, I think JamesGully is finally too ashamed to show his face again.

Will we ever find a homeopathy worth debating with? Don't worry, it's a rhetorical question assuming an answer in the negative.

 

[Dana Ullman]

Regarding your references to Oliver Wendell Holmes, I think we can all see from reference to Holmes' own writings that what you have written is demonstrably false. You are taking the view that if what someone has written has been shown to be false, he should amend what he has written if he has the opportunity. I think everyone here would agree with that. So.

• You wrote that Holmes "worshipped" a Dr. Rush. However, we can see from Holmes' own words that he was highly critical of Dr. Rush, and was in fact holding him up as an example of what was wrong with the medical establishment of the day. Will you change what you have written?
• You wrote that Holmes "got his calculations confused, and he incorrectly assumed that the homeopathic manufacturer had to have 10 times or 100 times more water than in the previous dilution". You have explicitly admitted that this is not the case, and Holmes assumed nothing of the kind. (And by the way, Holmes was talking about alcohol, not water.) Will you change what you have written?
• You wrote that Holmes never talked with any homoeopath, and never read a single book on homoeopathy. You have admitted that the former is merely an assumption for which you have no evidence, and anyone can see that the latter is not true simply by observing the extent to which Holmes quotes from the sritings of Hahnemann himself. Will you change what you have written?

Those are just the most clear-cut points, without even getting into James' lack of acknowledgement that Holmes was well aware of the criticism of Andral's work and addressed it to his satisfaction, or James' dishonest use of the word "confessed" when referring to Holmes' remarks that homoeopathy had taught us a valuable lesson (about how well people recover naturally when given no treatment), leading to the false implication that Holmes was admitting that homoeopathic methods were effective.

These are points which have been unambiguously shown to be erroneous.

Rolfe...Your arrogance is palpable, and your errors of fact are transparent. I previously gave you the page # (192...though you can also look at page 193) from Holmes' MEDICAL ESSAYS, but it seems that you've chosen to not look at this source, and instead, you have chosen to assume that I'm wrong. Whooops...but heck, you simply claim that I'm wrong without doing your homework...whooops again.

Holmes encouraged medical students to read the life and writings of Rush if they wanted "show a student the difficulties of getting at truth from medical experience." Holmes said of Rush that he "gave a direction to the medical mind of the country more than any other one man; perhaps he typifies it better than any other." (page 193)

For the record...I never said or implied that Holmes changed his attitude towards homeopathy (he didn't!). My point was that he didn't change a word of his essay on homeopathy despite the many errors of fact in it, including the WRONG analogy to dilutions (the 17th potency requires 17 testtubes of water...how or why he could assert any analogy to 10,000 Adriatic Seas is false). Holmes' reference to the "research" by Andral back-fired on him. He should not have even mentioned this "study," and he should have acknowledged his errors in referencing it, even though he re-published his Essay 40 years later.

Someone incorrectly said that I asserted that Darwin was influenced by Hahnemann...not true. I never said that. What I did say is that it is highly unlikely that he could have completed his book, Origin of Species, if he had not received treatment from his homeopathic doctor, James Gully! This is a part of history, and nothing can change this history.

As for criticisms of Elia's work, I haven't seen them.

As for a review of the 3 clinical trials on influenza, here's the Cochrane report. They call the research "promising." Because Cochrane maintains the highest standard for evaluating clinical research, I am still waiting for SOMEONE (!) on this list to acknowledge this fact. Whooops...you might actually have to admit that homeopathic medicines may work. I'm waiting. Who will be first?

Vickers AJ, Smith C, Homoeopathic Oscillococcinum for preventing and treating influenza and influenza-like syndromes (Cochrane Review) The Cochrane Library, Issue 4, 2005.


This dialogue with you hyper-skeptics has been an experiment for me. You've proven to maintain an unscientific attitude towards homeopathy. Sadly, you missed a great opportunity to have a real dialogue with a homeopath, and instead, you have chosen to posture yourself as each person being more dogmatic than the other.

I do know that this is being "recorded," and in the near future, many of you will be embarrassed by your flat-earth attitudes.

Finally...Hahnemann's gravestone says "Aude sapere"--dare to taste, to experience, to understand. He challenged everyone to simply try homeopathy. If you are really serious scientists, you will experiment with using homeopathics on yourself when you are ill. The medicines are basically safe. You may actually be surprised.

 

[Psiload]

If you are really serious scientists, you will experiment with using homeopathics on yourself when you are ill. The medicines are basically safe. You may actually be surprised.

I have. I wasn't.

 

[Michael C]

To clarify, Holmes' worship for Benjamin Rush was evidenced in Holmes' essay "Currents and Counter-Currents" written in 1860.

Let's see what Holmes actually said about Rush in that essay:

Dr. Rush thought and said that there were twenty times more intellect and a hundred times more knowledge in the country in 1799 than before the Revolution. His own mind was in a perpetual state of exaltation produced by the stirring scenes in which he had taken a part, and the quickened life of the time in which he lived. It was not the state to favor sound, calm observation. He was impatient, and Nature is profoundly imperturbable. We may adjust the beating of our hearts to her pendulum if we will and can, but we may be very sure that she will not change the pendulum's rate of going because our hearts are palpitating. He thought he had mastered yellow-fever. "Thank God," he said, "out of one hundred patients whom I have visited or prescribed for this day, I have lost none." Where was all his legacy of knowledge when Norfolk was decimated? Where was it when the blue flies were buzzing over the coffins of the unburied dead piled up in the cemetery of New Orleans, at the edge of the huge trenches yawning to receive them?

No, evidently Holmes did not worship Rush. Why does JamesGully pretend he did?

 

[Mojo]

Rolfe...Your arrogance is palpable, and your errors of fact are transparent. I previously gave you the page # (192...though you can also look at page 193) from Holmes' MEDICAL ESSAYS, but it seems that you've chosen to not look at this source, and instead, you have chosen to assume that I'm wrong. Whooops...but heck, you simply claim that I'm wrong without doing your homework...whooops again.

Holmes encouraged medical students to read the life and writings of Rush if they wanted "show a student the difficulties of getting at truth from medical experience." Holmes said of Rush that he "gave a direction to the medical mind of the country more than any other one man; perhaps he typifies it better than any other." (page 193)

You do realise that those passages have actually been quoted, in context, in this thread, don't you?

Here they are:

But there are other special American influences which we are bound to
take cognizance of. If I wished to show a student the difficulties
of getting at truth from medical experience, I would give him the
history of epilepsy to read. If I wished him to understand the
tendencies of the American medical mind, its sanguine enterprise, its
self-confidence, its audacious handling of Nature, its impatience
with her old-fashioned ways of taking time to get a sick man well, I
would make him read the life and writings of Benjamin Rush. Dr. Rush
thought and said that there were twenty times more intellect and a
hundred times more knowledge in the country in 1799 than before the
Revolution. His own mind was in a perpetual state of exaltation
produced by the stirring scenes in which he had taken a part, and the
quickened life of the time in which he lived. It was not the state
to favor sound, calm observation. He was impatient, and Nature is
profoundly imperturbable. We may adjust the beating of our hearts to
her pendulum if we will and can, but we may be very sure that she
will not change the pendulum's rate of going because our hearts are
palpitating. He thought he had mastered yellow-fever. "Thank God,"
he said, "out of one hundred patients whom I have visited or
prescribed for this day, I have lost none." Where was all his legacy
of knowledge when Norfolk was decimated? Where was it when the blue
flies were buzzing over the coffins of the unburied dead piled up in
the cemetery of New Orleans, at the edge of the huge trenches yawning
to receive them?

One such instance will do as well as twenty. Dr. Rush must have been
a charming teacher, as he was an admirable man. He was observing,
rather than a sound observer; eminently observing, curious, even,
about all manner of things. But he could not help feeling as if
Nature had been a good deal shaken by the Declaration of
Independence, and that American art was getting to be rather too much
for her,--especially as illustrated in his own practice. He taught
thousands of American students, he gave a direction to the medical
mind of the country more than any other one man; perhaps he typifies
it better than any other. It has clearly tended to extravagance in
remedies and trust in remedies, as in everything else. How could a
people which has a revolution once in four years, which has contrived
the Bowie-knife and the revolver, which has chewed the juice out of
all the superlatives in the language in Fourth of July orations, and
so used up its epithets in the rhetoric of abuse that it takes two
great quarto dictionaries to supply the demand; which insists in
sending out yachts and horses and boys to out-sail, out-run, out-
fight, and checkmate all the rest of creation; how could such a
people be content with any but "heroic" practice? What wonder that
the stars and stripes wave over doses of ninety grains of sulphate of
quinine, [More strictly, ninety-six grains in two hours. Dunglison's
Practice, 1842, vol. ii. p. 520. Eighty grains in one dose.
Ibid. p. 536. Ninety-six grains of sulphate of quinine are equal
to eight ounces of good bark.--Wood & Bache.] and that the American
eagle screams with delight to see three drachms of calomel given at a
single mouthful?

Add to this the great number of Medical Journals, all useful, we
hope, most of them necessary, we trust, many of them excellently well
conducted, but which must find something to fill their columns, and
so print all the new plans of treatment and new remedies they can get
hold of, as the newspapers, from a similar necessity, print the
shocking catastrophes and terrible murders.

They do not say what you claim they say. I have no idea whether this is because you think the target audience of your book is too lazy to look up references or too stupid to understand them, or simply because you are unable to understand them yourself. But now that it has been explained to you that your assertion is unsupported, it would, of course, be gross intellectual dishonesty (and, in view of your repeated comments about intellectual dishonesty, sheer hypocrisy) on your part if you were to allow the publication of your book without correction.

For the record...I never said or implied that Holmes changed his attitude towards homeopathy (he didn't!). My point was that he didn't change a word of his essay on homeopathy despite the many errors of fact in it, including the WRONG analogy to dilutions (the 17th potency requires 17 testtubes of water...how or why he could assert any analogy to 10,000 Adriatic Seas is false). Holmes' reference to the "research" by Andral back-fired on him. He should not have even mentioned this "study," and he should have acknowledged his errors in referencing it, even though he re-published his Essay 40 years later.

Again, the deceptive way you quoted Holmes is only too obvious to anyone who looks up the quotation in context:

In 1861, Dr. Holmes finally confessed that homeopathy “has taught us a lesson of the healing faculty of Nature which was needed, and for which many of us have made proper acknowledgements” (Holmes, 1891, x, xiii-xiv).

Homoeopathy is now merely a name, an unproved theory, and a box of
pellets pretending to be specifics, which, as all of us know, fail
ignominiously in those cases where we would thankfully sacrifice all
our prejudices and give the world to have them true to their
promises.

Homoeopathy has not died out so rapidly as Tractoration. Perhaps it
was well that it should not, for it has taught us a lesson of the
healing faculty of Nature which was needed, and for which many of us
have made proper acknowledgments. But it probably does more harm
than good to medical science at the present time, by keeping up the
delusion of treating everything by specifics,--the old barbarous
notion that sick people should feed on poisons [Lachesis, arrow-
poison, obtained from a serpent (Pulte). Crotalus horridus,
rattlesnake's venom (Neidhard). The less dangerous Pediculus capitis
is the favorite remedy of Dr. Mure, the English "Apostle of
Homoeopathy." These are examples of the retrograde current setting
towards barbarism against which a part of the Discourse at the
beginning of this volume is directed.

The words "finally confessed" in your statement imply that Holmes changed his declared position on homoeopathy.

It has also been explained to you, more than once, that the illustration of dilutions that Holmes used was not inappropriate. Apparently you were incapable of understanding that as well.

Holmes addressed criticisms of Andral's work in his essay. If there were other criticisms of this work of which Holmes should have been aware but didn't address, please give more details of them, and proper references.

Someone incorrectly said that I asserted that Darwin was influenced by Hahnemann...not true. I never said that. What I did say is that it is highly unlikely that he could have completed his book, Origin of Species, if he had not received treatment from his homeopathic doctor, James Gully! This is a part of history, and nothing can change this history.

All the available sources (apart from your homoeopathic chums) indicate that Gully was a hydropath. Even Darwin describes Gully acting as a hydropath and bringing in a second doctor as a homoeopath to treat his daughter. And, contrary to your claims, there is nothing to indicate that Darwin thought homoeopathy worked, and direct quotations from him, both during and after he took Gully's "cure", indicating that he thought it was utter nonsense. And, of course, the Hydropathic treatments Darwin received almost certainly didn't have any real positive effect either, although the diet and exercise regimes might have.

Finally...Hahnemann's gravestone says "Aude sapere"--dare to taste, to experience, to understand. He challenged everyone to simply try homeopathy. If you are really serious scientists, you will experiment with using homeopathics on yourself when you are ill. The medicines are basically safe. You may actually be surprised.

I know where Hahnemann pulled homoeopathy from, and I therefore have no desire whatsoever to taste it.

I have, however, taken a homoeopathic remedy prescribed me for a headache. It had, as far as I could tell, no effect whatsoever.

P.S. have you managed to track down the "Cochrane Commission" [sic] to which you referred yet? Whooops!

 

[Michael C]

Holmes said of Rush that he "gave a direction to the medical mind of the country more than any other one man; perhaps he typifies it better than any other." (page 193)

Let's see how Holmes continued:

"... he gave a direction to the medical mind of the country more than any other one man; perhaps he typifies it better than any other. It has clearly tended to extravagance in remedies and trust in remedies, as in everything else."

 

[Mojo]

No, evidently Holmes did not worship Rush. Why does JamesGully pretend he did?

If you look very carefully, you might find the answer towards the end of this post.

 

[Michael C]

As for a review of the 3 clinical trials on influenza, here's the Cochrane report. They call the research "promising." Because Cochrane maintains the highest standard for evaluating clinical research, I am still waiting for SOMEONE (!) on this list to acknowledge this fact. Whooops...you might actually have to admit that homeopathic medicines may work. I'm waiting. Who will be first?

Vickers AJ, Smith C, Homoeopathic Oscillococcinum for preventing and treating influenza and influenza-like syndromes (Cochrane Review) The Cochrane Library, Issue 4, 2005.

I found this: http://www.mrw.interscience.wiley.com/cochrane/clsysrev/articles/CD001957/frame.html

I quote the "plain language summary":

"Homoeopathic Oscillococcinum does not prevent influenza but might shorten the length of the illness"

... "might shorten the length of the illness"? That doesn't sound conclusive to me. And let's see by how much the length of the illness was shortened:

"Oscillococcinum treatment reduced the length of influenza illness by 0.28 days"

How significant is this result? Maybe somebody with more medical experience than myself can explain.

 

[fls]

As for a review of the 3 clinical trials on influenza, here's the Cochrane report. They call the research "promising." Because Cochrane maintains the highest standard for evaluating clinical research, I am still waiting for SOMEONE (!) on this list to acknowledge this fact. Whooops...you might actually have to admit that homeopathic medicines may work. I'm waiting. Who will be first?

Promising. Translation: while it is still much more likely to be a false-positive, than it is to be a true-positive, it is still better than the rest of the body of homeopathic research which is much, much, much more likely to generate false-positives than true-positives.

The very, very best that homeopathy has to offer as far as any sort of evidence that it doesn't consist of a vast ediface of chance, wishful thinking and fraud is called "promising".

And what may this "promising" treatment do? You still get just as sick for several days, but on the last day, you feel better at breakfast-time instead of lunch.

And all that you can "promisingly" conclude is that water prepared in a particular manner has a tiny effect on a particular self-limited illness. No connection whatsoever can be made between that and some elaborate system of preparing other waters. I could just as easily use it to support my contention that choosing treatments that start with the letter "o" will do the trick.

That you expend so much effort over the acceptance of this pathetic little piece of "evidence" serves only to highlight the barrenness of the entire field of homeopathy.

Linda

 

[MRC_Hans]

If you are really serious scientists, you will experiment with using homeopathics on yourself when you are ill. The medicines are basically safe. You may actually be surprised.

Please explain why you consider it serious science to make uncontrolled self-experiments with medicines of unknown effects.

Also explain how a non-homeopath experimenting on self-cure has anything to do with proper homeopathic practice. IF homeopathic remedies worked the way homeopaths claim, the chance for an amateur to do more good than bad would be small.

Hans

 

[Rolfe]

Hans, perhaps he's suggesting that we should take a remedy to experience "proving" symptoms. Though why he should say that is safe, given the body of homoeopathic opinion that indicates serious harm occasionally results from provings, I don't know.

But as you and I both know, having tried it, no proving symptoms, even though we were assured that we would be "amazed" at what we'd experience.

Rolfe.

 

[kieran]

What I did say is that it is highly unlikely that he could have completed his book, Origin of Species, if he had not received treatment from his homeopathic doctor, James Gully!

A claim for which you have no evidence. (The pesky little thing that obviously doesn't matter to you.)

Care to put a ball-park probability on your "highly unlikely" twaddle above? Why is it not even more probable that the treatment he received from his "homoeopathic" doctor had absolutely no beneficial effect? How do you know that it wasn't something else (healthier living has already been mentioned, the natural course of the illness is another) that happened at the same time that caused his improvement? In which case, it would be actually be highly likely "that he could have completed his book, Origin of Species, if he had not received treatment from his homeopathic doctor, James Gully!"

This is a part of history, and nothing can change this history.

... but you obviously feel free to re-write history by quote mining. You know what you do ... and you know why you need to do it ...

JamesGully is both a hypocrite and intellectually dishonest.

 

[Rolfe]

Rolfe...Your arrogance is palpable, and your errors of fact are transparent. I previously gave you the page # (192...though you can also look at page 193) from Holmes' MEDICAL ESSAYS, but it seems that you've chosen to not look at this source, and instead, you have chosen to assume that I'm wrong. Whooops...but heck, you simply claim that I'm wrong without doing your homework...whooops again.

Holmes encouraged medical students to read the life and writings of Rush if they wanted "show a student the difficulties of getting at truth from medical experience." Holmes said of Rush that he "gave a direction to the medical mind of the country more than any other one man; perhaps he typifies it better than any other." (page 193)

Wow, you've got some nerve! Having been thoroughly exposed in your cherry-picking quote-mining, you simply continue to repeat it! I realise this has already been said by others, but as it is me you are addressing, I'll repeat it.

When you look at your very own chosen quotes in context, it is perfectly clear that Holmes was criticising Rush as a prime example of all that he believed was wrong with the medical establishment of his day. Even the bare phrases you yourself quote do not support the interpretation (of "worship") you put on them. Even these phrases in isolation can obviously just as easily be taken to imply that Holmes was holding Rush up as a bad example rather than a good one, and hey, when we see the context (kindly provided by Mojo, but heck, let's just repeat it again), we can clearly see that that is exactly the case.

But there are other special American influences which we are bound to take cognizance of. If I wished to show a student the difficulties of getting at truth from medical experience, I would give him the history of epilepsy to read. If I wished him to understand the tendencies of the American medical mind, its sanguine enterprise, its self-confidence, its audacious handling of Nature, its impatience with her old-fashioned ways of taking time to get a sick man well, I would make him read the life and writings of Benjamin Rush. Dr. Rush thought and said that there were twenty times more intellect and a hundred times more knowledge in the country in 1799 than before the Revolution. His own mind was in a perpetual state of exaltation produced by the stirring scenes in which he had taken a part, and the quickened life of the time in which he lived. It was not the state to favor sound, calm observation. He was impatient, and Nature is profoundly imperturbable. We may adjust the beating of our hearts to her pendulum if we will and can, but we may be very sure that she will not change the pendulum's rate of going because our hearts are palpitating. He thought he had mastered yellow-fever. "Thank God," he said, "out of one hundred patients whom I have visited or prescribed for this day, I have lost none." Where was all his legacy of knowledge when Norfolk was decimated? Where was it when the blue flies were buzzing over the coffins of the unburied dead piled up in the cemetery of New Orleans, at the edge of the huge trenches yawning to receive them?

One such instance will do as well as twenty. Dr. Rush must have been a charming teacher, as he was an admirable man. He was observing, rather than a sound observer; eminently observing, curious, even, about all manner of things. But he could not help feeling as if Nature had been a good deal shaken by the Declaration of Independence, and that American art was getting to be rather too much for her,--especially as illustrated in his own practice. He taught thousands of American students, he gave a direction to the medical mind of the country more than any other one man; perhaps he typifies it better than any other. It has clearly tended to extravagance in remedies and trust in remedies, as in everything else. How could a people which has a revolution once in four years, which has contrived the Bowie-knife and the revolver, which has chewed the juice out of all the superlatives in the language in Fourth of July orations, and so used up its epithets in the rhetoric of abuse that it takes two great quarto dictionaries to supply the demand; which insists in sending out yachts and horses and boys to out-sail, out-run, out-fight, and checkmate all the rest of creation; how could such a people be content with any but "heroic" practice? What wonder that the stars and stripes wave over doses of ninety grains of sulphate of quinine, [More strictly, ninety-six grains in two hours. Dunglison's Practice, 1842, vol. ii. p. 520. Eighty grains in one dose. Ibid. p. 536. Ninety-six grains of sulphate of quinine are equal to eight ounces of good bark.--Wood & Bache.] and that the American eagle screams with delight to see three drachms of calomel given at a single mouthful?

Add to this the great number of Medical Journals, all useful, we hope, most of them necessary, we trust, many of them excellently well conducted, but which must find something to fill their columns, and so print all the new plans of treatment and new remedies they can get hold of, as the newspapers, from a similar necessity, print the shocking catastrophes and terrible murders.

James, do you have some sort of reading comprehension problem? Do you now see that even your own cherry-picked quotes are holding Rush up as a bad example? Will you change what you have written?

For the record...I never said or implied that Holmes changed his attitude towards homeopathy (he didn't!).

Incorrect. You have very definitely implied that Holmes changed his attitude to homoeopathy when you wrote

In 1861, Dr. Holmes finally confessed that homeopathy “has taught us a lesson of the healing faculty of Nature which was needed, and for which many of us have made proper acknowledgements” (Holmes, 1891, x, xiii-xiv).

The words "finally confessed", followed by an out-of-context quote that appears to pronounce favourably on homoeopathy, most definitely imply that he changed his attitude. Since you acknowledge that he didn't, which makes this statement highly misleading, you should change what you have written. Will you do that?

My point was that he didn't change a word of his essay on homeopathy despite the many errors of fact in it, including the WRONG analogy to dilutions (the 17th potency requires 17 testtubes of water...how or why he could assert any analogy to 10,000 Adriatic Seas is false).

Reading comprehension problems again? I thought you had understood how wrong you were about this, but it seems not.

First, read what Holmes has said. He is talking not about water as a solvent, but alcohol. Why do you continually refer to water?

Surely even you cannot possibly imagine that Holmes was "asserting" that 10,000 times the volume of the Adriatic (of alcohol, no less!) was actually employed to make every 17C potency??? He said no such thing. He was in fact crystal clear about what he was saying.

It must be remembered that these comparisons are not matters susceptible of dispute, being founded on simple arithmetical computations, level to the capacity of any intelligent schoolboy. A person who once wrote a very small pamphlet made some show of objecting to calculations of this kind, on the ground that the highest dilutions could easily be made with a few ounces of alcohol. But he should have remembered that at every successive dilution he lays aside or throws away ninety-nine hundredths of the fluid on which he is operating, and that, although he begins with a drop, he only prepares a millionth, billionth, trillionth, and similar fractions of it, all of which, added together, would constitute but a vastly minute portion of the drop with which he began. But now let us suppose we take one single drop of the Tincture of Camomile, and that the whole of this were to be carried through the common series of dilutions.

"Let us suppose" that we don't throw anything away, but dilute the entire starting amount of the mother tincture. Does "let us suppose" convey anything to you? I don't know how Holmes could have made himself any clearer. He was pointing out that the effective dilution reached at the end of the process was as if the original thimbleful of mother tincture had been diluted by that amount.

In this he was perfectly correct (allowing for the trifling errors of Lake Superior or the Caspian he alluded to). He points out that the comprehension of this is "within the capacity of any intelligent schoolboy". He even pokes mild fun at someone who had objected to the calculations on the grounds that in fact one only needs "a few ounces of alcohol" actually to go through the usual process. I think pretty much everyone, reading what he actually wrote, would agree that he'd made himself pretty clear.

But no, you James are still in the position of the "person who once wrote a very small pamphlet", apparently not understanding Holmes' very lucid point, and continuing to repeat the hoary old misunderstanding well over 150 years later. Have you got it into your skull yet? HOLMES WAS RIGHT. Will you change what you have written?

Holmes' reference to the "research" by Andral back-fired on him. He should not have even mentioned this "study," and he should have acknowledged his errors in referencing it, even though he re-published his Essay 40 years later.

Holmes made reference to observations made by Andral. He was well aware that Andral's work had been criticised. He made reference to the criticisms in his essay. He also debunked those criticisms, and stated his opinion that Andral's work was valid. He gave his reasons for believing that.

Do you believe that everyone should "acknowledge their error" in referencing anything that has ever been subject to criticism, no matter how unfounded they believe that criticism to be? In that case, you'd better acknowledge as error pretty much everything you ever wrote, because pretty much all of that has been subjected to massive amounts of criticism. Elia, Rey, Roy, Benveniste, Ennis, Milgrom, Walach, all their publications (on homoeopathy) have been torn to shreds. So perhaps you shouldn't even mention them! And "acknowledge your error" when you have. Oh, what do I hear you say? You don't agree with these criticisms? Well, fancy that - Holmes didn't agree with the criticisms of Dr. Andral either, and said so, giving his reasons. I'd hardly call that backfiring.

James, your position is completely untenable. You are lambasting Holmes for not having changed passages in his writings which you are asserting were false. But now it has been shown to you quite clearly that these passages are in fact perfectly correct, and that Holmes was not in fact saying what you are declaring he said. By your own logic, you must change what you have written.

You must take on board

• Holmes was deeply critical of Dr. Rush, holding him up as an example of all that he felt was wrong with the contemporary medical establishment
• Holmes never changed his mind about homoeopathy, and he never "finally confessed" anything in its favour
• Holmes was perfectly correct in pointing out that if the entire initial quantity of mother tincture was diluted, the final dilution would require a volume of alcohol ten thousand times the volume of the Adriatic sea
• Holmes made reference to the criticism of Andral's work, and explained his reasons for disagreeing with the critics

These facts are not subject to dispute, they are perfectly clear to anyone with a reading comprehension age of about 12. You must therefore change what you have written.

I see you're still banging on about "many errors of fact" in Holmes' essay. You have failed to demonstrate even one. Care to try again?

Rolfe.