• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Why did allopathy become scientific?

CurtC

Illuminator
CurtC
Joined
Aug 4, 2001
Messages
4,785
Location
Dallas, TX
I recently came across the History House site. A very interesting article describes the weeks of torment that President Garfield underwent after he had been shot, before he died. The article is Garfield II: A Lengthy Demise.

Medicine was divided into two branches at the time - homeopathy and allopathy. After Garfield was shot, the decision of which to use came down to an actual fist fight, and the allopaths won. If one didn't know the history of medicine since then, but were just told that one branch would stay stagnant while the other adopted the ideas of science, it isn't obvious to me which it would have been. I would have picked homeopathy, since it was actually founded on ideas of testing substances.

So why did homeopathy stagnate, while allopathy blossomed into modern medicine?

Oh, and I like footnote #8. Not bad for a historian:
The astute reader will note this really means that the patients were administered water that had been shaken up -- water that had only the slightest chance of containing a few molecules of the original active ingredient. Rubes today sill believe in the miracles of homeopathic medicines.
Click to expand...
 
This is my favorite line from this story:

They mixed together an egg, one ounce of boullion, one and a half ounces of milk, a half ounce of whiskey, and ten drops of opium and inserted this stew into the President's rectum. Needless to say, this strategy proved ineffective.
Click to expand...

Really? Gee, I can't understand why it didn't work.
 
Perhaps homeopathy was already associated with selling bogus elixirs from horse carts, so people of a scientific bent went over to the allopathy side.

~~ Paul
 
CurtC wrote:

So why did homeopathy stagnate, while allopathy blossomed into modern medicine?

And why did Mesmerism die out altogether? "The Master" made many approving references to Mesmer's "animal magnetism" in his Sixth Organon. So why is it that modern homeopaths don't employ Mesmeric techniques like Hahnemann apparently did?

Note: I think is was Badly Shaved Monkey that pointed out the tendency of some homeopaths to refer to Hahnemann as "the Master". I wouldn't have believed if I hadn't seen it with me own peepers.

How spooky is that? :eek:

Imagine if MDs went around referring to Hippocrates "our lord", or "his eminence"? :D

torgohead.jpg
"I'm Torgo. I take care of the place while the Master is away."
 
Sounds like homeopathy had all the good stuff...booze, opium, morphine, and rectal application.

:o
 
shemp said:
This is my favorite line from this story:

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
They mixed together an egg, one ounce of boullion, one and a half ounces of milk, a half ounce of whiskey, and ten drops of opium and inserted this stew into the President's rectum. Needless to say, this strategy proved ineffective.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Really? Gee, I can't understand why it didn't work.
Click to expand...
What happened was that the President told the quacks what they could do with their folk remedies, and... well... apparently there was some confusion. ;)
 
Psiload wrote:
"I'm Torgo. I take care of the place while the Master is away."
Click to expand...
Is that quote from a really, unbelievably bad movie that I saw sent up on MST3K several years ago? I recall this movie was shot in El Paso (since my wife is from there).
 
CurtC said:
Medicine was divided into two branches at the time - homeopathy and allopathy.
Click to expand...
It's not that simple. Homoeopathy was and is a cult, invented by one man, and pursued with all the fervour of cult devotees. "Allopathy" isn't a real term at all, it's just the word Hahnemann (the inventor of homoeopathy unless you count the rumours about him having pinched the idea from an Irishman) coined to cover "that-which-is-not-homoeopathy".

Nobody who ever went to medical school was taught anything called "allopathy", and most real medics consider the term to be an insult. It's usually used either semi-insultingly by altmed devotees, or in ignorance by people studying the alt-med/real-med divide, either current or historical.

Basically there never were "two schools" like that. There was homoeopathy, and other cult-type disciplines such as chiropractic, who also refer to real medicine somewhat sneeringly as "allopathy". And then there was pragmatism.

Gradually the medicine which wasn't blinkered by adherence to a cult and the cult leader found better ways of doing things, and proper scientific medicine developed out of that.

Rolfe.
 
CurtC said:
Is that quote from a really, unbelievably bad movie that I saw sent up on MST3K several years ago? I recall this movie was shot in El Paso (since my wife is from there).
Click to expand...
Manos: The Hands of Fate. A true cinematic masterpiece.
 
Why did alt med stagnate? Hmm. I don't think it has. It has forever evolved to make new and ridiculous claims. Even pseudoscience is used to hock new remedies.

What exactly is meant by stagnate? The fact that sCAM refuses to acknowledge reality about how the human body actually works? The fact that straightening the spine DOES NOT cure deafness? The fact that a mysterious energy is NOT what needs to be fixed when a person has any disease?

Two branches? More like two different trees on opposite sides of the planet.

Gradually the medicine which wasn't blinkered by adherence to a cult and the cult leader found better ways of doing things, and proper scientific medicine developed out of that.

Rolfe.
Click to expand...

Zactly
 
Unfortunately, even "allopathy" has some quacks in the ranks.

I was up late last night, and saw an infomercial on TV by
this woman who has an MD from UCSF (very prestigious medical institution in the states) and is an orthopedic surgeon.

She made a number of outrageous claims on TV, including:

1) Chemotherapy, radiation, surgery are absolutely useless in fighting cancer. (I agree they are not as good as we would like, but for her to summarily dismiss them as entirely ineffective is going way too far).

2) ALL disease is caused by 3 things: malnutrition, dehydration, and stress.

3) Microbes have NO ROLE in disease

I wish that UCSF could rescind her medical degree, or the state would have her medical license revoked for perpetuating such outrageous claims. Her bad behavior, rightly or wrongly, rubs off on all of us.

It appears she had some kind of religious transformation and has allowed that to totally shape her thinking regarding medicine.

Basically she has dismissed just about everything that "allopathic" medicine claims, yet she prominently displays her medical degree and takes every opportunity to flash her "allopathic" medical credentials.
 
I think that the general consensus is that Lorraine Day is mentally ill. If you go to Quackwatch, there's a pretty good writeup on her.
 
I was going to be critical of her, then I saw this on her site:




A Warning to My Critics!
For those of you who are attacking me or the TRUTH I am telling, please be warned that there are SERIOUS consequences for you: you immediately will be placed on my Prayer List and I will pray for you daily! .....

......But I do not pray for retribution for you. God is not in the business of punishment. There is no punishment for sin - - - there are only consequences, meaning that you will reap exactly what you have sown!......

......In other words, you will bring your own consequences on yourself! You will eventually receive back exactly what you have done to others, and you will receive trouble up to five times more than you have brought on others, according to God¹s laws of restitution (Exodus 22:1-4).


Boy am I scared!
 
I thought her threats were almost as scary as her quackery. That woman is scary beyond all reason.
 
HopkinsMedStudent said:
Unfortunately, even "allopathy" has some quacks in the ranks.

I was up late last night, and saw an infomercial on TV by
this woman who has an MD from UCSF (very prestigious medical institution in the states) and is an orthopedic surgeon.
Click to expand...

I don't really think it's fair to say she's a "quack in the ranks"


Though this is the first I've heard of her, there is 0 doubt in my mind that established medicine simply laughs her away. A problem with all the sciences, if I may call it a problem, is that a lot of the time the wrong people get involved. There are many creationists, for instance, that are literally gathering degrees in various evolutionary sciences for the singular purpose of discrediting them. This is why it is important to never, ever judge a claim based solely on the letters behind the name. There are people with advanced degrees that, while knowing and perhaps understanding the concepts, refuse to apply them.
 
Oh... Lorraine Day... old news. Blasted to bits by Quackwatch and the like.

My question is, did homeopathy not only stagnate, did it ever flourish?
 
Ah, Lorraine Day. The youngest-looking 68-year-old on the planet,* and the only person known to have made a million out of having a nervous breakdown.

There are plenty qualified medics and vets who have "gone over to the dark side" as we call it. Some are genuinely deluded or mentally ill, but I'm afraid quite a lot are only doing it for the money - it's easier than practising proper medicine, and your patients are a lot less likely to sue. That doesn't say anything about real medicine except that all sorts of people train in it, or about the validity of the term "allopathy". I think by definition, anyone who uses the term allopathy is almost certainly a woo-woo.

The only time homoeopathy ever flourished is in the imaginations of its practitioners. Oliver Wendell Holmes took it to bits with scientific precision, citing cases and incidents going back to the 1830s, which doesn't really allow much time for "flourishing".

Rolfe.

* If you think I'm implying that the picture on Lorraine Day's promotional materials isn't actually her, well, I'm not responsible for your inferences....
 
history house is one of my all time most favorite places on the net. it is very sad that they haven't published anything new lately.
if you haven't read all the archives, visit!:)
 
Suezoled said:

My question is, did homeopathy not only stagnate, did it ever flourish?
Click to expand...

Well, you have to there define flourish. Effective, no. Lots of people using it, yes.

It flourishes today since people make the sCAM folks rich enough to keep peddling it.

It is stagnate in that it is so utterly useless and ineffective.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom