I am, I promise, not exaggerating.

I dont mean supplements, which are legal because they are considered to benotdrugs.

And I dont mean foods that make iffy or overblown health claims (nothing as boring as that).

And it does not contain any medicine.

My friends: Homeopathy is not only nonsenseit is some of the wildest nonsense you will read about today.

What the hell is homeopathy, really?

Lets step back in our time machine to 1796.

A German physician, Samuel Hahnemann, was disappointed with the state of medicine at the time.

This was the age of bloodletting, when doctors responded to illnesses by trying to balance the bodys humors.

But his alternative didnt work, either.

Clinical trials, as we know them, were not a standard tool of science or medicine.

So, one day, Hahnemann ate somecinchona bark.

This is the tree bark from South America that is now recognized as one of the first modern pharmaceuticals.

Its where we get quinine, the tonic in tonic water.

We now know that a chemical found in the bark can kill the parasite that causes malaria.

Hahnemann did not have malaria.

So how is that not making the sick persons illness worse?

Well, the (incorrect) theory goes: You separate thesubstancefrom thehealing properties of that substance.

You put the healing properties into water.

Then you have magic water.

To be clear, we are notjustdiluting the onion water.

The dilution is only 6X.

This is no secret.

But many homeopathic medicines arenotdiluted to extremes.

If that were something more toxic than onion, we might worry.

And then there are products sold as homeopathic even though they contain a substantial amount of the active ingredient.

But there is no FDA regulation requiring your marketing strategy to stick to a single theory of medicine.

And by the same token, it does not follow that homeopathic medicines are safe because they are diluted.

In fact, products labeled as homeopathic have allegedly killed people.

One of the ingredients was belladonna, or deadly nightshade.

The company issued a recall in 2017,just like it had in 2010when thesame damn thinghappened.

The dilution in that case was 2X, meaning the products had 0.1% zinc.

Well, its sort of not.But the FDA also isnt trying very hard to stop it.

Homeopathic medicines arent tested with clinical trials.

They rely on provings, in which the raw ingredients are given to healthy volunteers and their symptoms documented.

According to homeopathic theory, no clinical trials are needed.

Which means that a lot of this nonsense is still on store shelves and will stay there probably forever.

(Cough medicine, for example, isnot for children under the age of four.)

So heres how to read the label: First, see if its a Drug Facts label or not.

But supplements are not medicine.)

A lot hides behind that Latin, by the way.

Sometimes ingredients are plant extracts or chemical elements, and sometimes they are common items like onions or salt.

Thats aspecial recipe from Hahnemann himself.

The ingredient is often listed as Anas barbariae, which is meant to refer to the Muscovy duck.

Today we know that influenza is triggered by the influenza virus.

But in 1920, viruses had yet to be discovered.

He described seeing tiny microbes that darted or oscillated quickly back and forth.

This universal germ as he called it, was responsible for many illnesses!

Yep, a vibrating microbe that causes all illness.

Make a homeopathic preparation of that, and Bobs your uncle!

Now,howdo you make a homeopathic preparation of that?

Well, Roy thought he had found the same vibrating microbes in duck livers.

(To this day, nobody knows what he actually saw.

There are no vibrating microbes in duck liversyou can go look.)

(A real price I just confirmed.

God, I wish I were making this up.)

You know whatactuallyworks for cases of flu that are mild enough to treat at home?

Maybe a little saline to flush out the mucus in your nose.

You know:home remedies.