[Alex3917]

"There exist historical examples of quackery which wasn't, e.g. hand washing."

And homeopathy, which even James Randi admits was more effective than western medicine in the 1800s. (In the video that was submitted to HN recently.)

[carbocation]

That's very misleading without providing proper context.

In Hahneman's time, medicine was actively harmful and virtually never actively helpful. The risk benefit analysis would not come out in favor of getting treatment.

In contrast, homeopathy does nothing. It's placebo. And giving placebo, it turns out, is safer than actively sticking dirty instruments into your patient's bloodstream and giving them bacteremia.

In that context, the statement makes sense, but is still obviously tongue in cheek. Homeopathy never worked, but medicine at the time actively harmed.

[Alex3917]

"In contrast, homeopathy does nothing. It's placebo."

Well, yes and no. It is a placebo, but the research seems to show that placebos do significantly more than nothing, at least for some diseases (pain, depression, etc.).

The comment I was replying to was asking for examples of where things that were once believed to be quackery were later vindicated. At the time homeopathy was believed to be quackery. In fact the reason the AMA was launched was to combat homeopathy because it was cutting into their profits; one of their first acts was to launch a 'propaganda department' to scare people off of homeopathy. (Essentially the AMA was founded to kill people. They knew they were less effective than homeopathy at the time and they knew they were killing people, but they just didn't care because they wanted the money.)

The point is though that at the time homeopathy was actually significantly better than western medicine. Now if the definition of something not being quackery is if it's the best treatment available to us at the time, then homeopathy couldn't have been quackery by definition, since it was in fact the most scientifically advanced (or however you'd phrase it) form of medicine available at the time.

[carbocation]

> Now if the definition of something not being quackery is if it's the best treatment available to us at the time,

I do not believe that to be the common definition of quackery.

>then homeopathy couldn't have been quackery by definition, since it was in fact the most scientifically advanced (or however you'd phrase it) form of medicine available at the time.

Again, this is misleading. Homeopathy was and still is completely scientifically bogus. It was never and is not now advanced. It is misleading to say that a field that unintentionally had no effect was scientifically advanced. It's simply the (undisputed) truth that their outcomes were better because of their lack of real intervention, not because of any scientific merit whatsoever.

[Alex3917]

@carbocation

You can call it whatever you want, but the fact remains that if homeopathy was quackery then western medicine was the whole duck.

Also, it's not really fair to say that homeopathy was better merely by accident or that it wasn't scientific, since they're the ones who pioneered evidence based medicine. It might have been completely wrong, but it was scientific. They at least tested their ideas empirically unlike western medicine at the time, which by any reasonable definition must make it more scientifically advanced than the alternative.

[carbocation]

I am surprised to see that we disagree on the facts as well as the interpretation of them.

I don't think the literature is nearly as scientific as you seem to think it is, nor do I credit Hahnemann with the shift to empiricism in medicine, which came later.

Again, just saying that medicine was harmful and that Hahnemann was observant does not make homeopathy of the time scientific.

[Alex3917]

"I don't think the literature is nearly as scientific as you seem to think it is, nor do I credit Hahnemann with the shift to empiricism in medicine, which came later."

Well I should admit that I'm not an expert on this, but if you read the JAMA book review of the book I mentioned above:

"By taking the homeopathy of that period seriously himself, Haller is able to remind readers that 19th-century homeopaths pioneered systematic drug-testing research, challenged the dangerously depleting procedures of mainstream physicians at that time, established rigorous professional standards, and valued advanced education at least as highly as their mainstream counterparts did. It was not without reason that homeopaths considered the bases of their approach to medical problems to be more logical and more promising than the inherited tradition of the ancients, upon which mainstream physicians still based their practices."

You have to remember also that 'scientific' is a relative term. Placebo controlled trials weren't invented until the 50s. And doing properly controlled placebo trials (with active placebos) is very rare even today.

Homeopathy of the 1860s and 1870s might not seem at all scientific by today's standards, but that doesn't mean it wasn't a significant advance in science at the time. (And by the way this was well after Hahnemann, who did most of his work on homeopathy in the 1810s and was already long dead by this time.)

[aswanson]

Saying homeopathy was more advanced than regular medicine at the time is akin to saying rain dancing was more advanced than irrigation of crops from a polluted water source. At least the latter method is based on the assumption of certain evidenced-backed empirical principles. The former method has no correlation or effect on reality under any assumption beyond pleasing the rain gods and associated bullshit.

[Alex3917]

@Derleth

Read the book Homeopathy: The Academic Years. Even the AMA admits that this is true, and they give the book a very favorable review on their website. (And also the AMA talks about their propaganda department on their own timeline of their history.)

[derleth]

> At the time homeopathy was believed to be quackery.

It still is believed to be quackery, because it still is quackery.

> In fact the reason the AMA was launched was to combat homeopathy because it was cutting into their profits; one of their first acts was to launch a 'propaganda department' to scare people off of homeopathy. (Essentially the AMA was founded to kill people. They knew they were less effective than homeopathy at the time and they knew they were killing people, but they just didn't care because they wanted the money.)

This sounds like conspiracist nonsense. Do you have a single cite for any of it?

[frobozz]

Homeopathy was more effective in the 1800s because the patient was only under threat from their ailments, rather than having to worry about the doctor killing them as well.

Early medicine was in a large portion, quackery. Some of it was actively harmful. Something that has no effect whatsoever will be more effective than something that harms and doesn't cure.

[TillE]

The placebo effect is remarkably powerful. But there's nothing special about homeopathy.

[derleth]

> homeopathy, which even James Randi admits was more effective than western medicine in the 1800s

I hope you realize how worthless this statement is in a discussion of modern medicine.

Also, it's incredibly racist to call 'medicine that works' 'Western medicine'. Do you also call 'math that works' 'Western mathematics'?

[Alex3917]

"Also, it's incredibly racist to call 'medicine that works' 'Western medicine'."

I assure you that's not how I'm using the phrase.

[derleth]

> I assure you that's not how I'm using the phrase.

Except it is. Medicine can be practiced by anyone who knows how, not just people with the right-colored skin.