Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

Actually, since homeopathy is based on the idea that "like cures like", the scenario outlined above would not be a cure for scurvy based on homeopathy. (It's still silly, and deliberately so, since AFAIK homeopathy doesn't address deficiencies... but however you slice it, using orange juice in whatever concentration to prevent or cure scurvy, is explicitly allopathic, not homeopathic.) Thing is, there are situations -- well, at least one[*] -- in which conventional Western medicine uses homeopathy, but the aspect being mocked here is the notion that a dilution so minute that there's fewer than one molecule of the allegedly beneficial substance per dose (that is, you have to take multiple doses in order to get up to even odds of one molecule of the intended substance being present) has a biochemical effect.

Which is how many homepathic remedies are prepared, and most (all? I'm not sure) of the ones usually described as 'homepathic medicine' are.

It appears that the person I quoted has a deeper understanding of homeopathy than you do, mon ami, whether he 'gets' all the nuances or not.

If there's something scientific going on when homeopathic remedies like that work, it's not by the mechanism described by any homeopathy-proponent I've heard. Note that I won't rule out magick, but the pseudoscience annoys me. And when you get to dilutions where you're essentially swallowing pure water that 'remembers' having at some point been in contact with water that was once in contact with water that had a molecule of some substance floating in it, that sounds much more like the law of contagion (a magickal principle) than chemistry or biochemistry.

So if it works for you, great, but a) the theory used by homeopaths I've heard of is still pseudoscience and the real explanation is elsewhere, and b) take care not to mistake 'anecdote' for the singular of 'data'.

Again, I'm not going to discount (out of hand) either magick or the placebo effect. The way to figure out whether any of the remedies work is double-blind studies. But the explanation currently given for why they 'should' work is painful pseudoscience. And that's what's being mocked here.

[*] Allergy shots are an example of homeopathy a) demonstrably working better than the placebo effect and b) explainable without resorting to pseudoscience. Note also that the concentrations of allergens in allergy shots are far, far greater than the concentrations of most homeopathic remedies sold under the homeopathic-remedy banner.

Similarly, caffeine can give me a headache, but if I already have a headache it can help relieve the headache. Is this homeopathy, the caffeine curing the same thing it causes, or is it allopathy because two completely different kinds of headaches with different mechanisms behind them are involved? All I (currently) know is that the same drug that can give me a headache can (partially) cure one, and I'm not going to let a distrust in the usual explanation of homeopathy stop me from taking advantage of that observation. Then again, I'm also using milligrams of the stuff at a time, not sub-molecule dilutions.

a) How fitting
b) You're welcome