Jaggy Splinters Read Free Page B

have been allergic to quinine. Thus was overlooked a simple, rational explanation for the symptoms he experienced, and instead we now have an international pseudo-scientific movement whose founding principle is in fact based on one man’s misreading of his own unusual pathology.
    ‘Hahnemann was way ahead of his time,’ Sandy went on. ‘He understood that these substances could trigger the body’s ability to heal itself. You could say he anticipated modern immunology, though he took a different route. Immunology uses small quantities of the disease itself to stimulate the immune system, but the principle is the same, and he pioneered it. Though it’s not strictly true to say it was all on the basis of his work with cinchona bark. Hahnemann further experimented with giving people small doses of other substances known to cause disease-like symptoms: arsenic and strychnine, for instance.’
    Carol’s eyes bulged at this point. ‘He gave them poison?’ she asked.
    ‘In small doses – ever decreasing doses, in fact, Carol, and you have actually nudged us towards the most amazing discovery at the root of homeopathy. Hahnemann’s patients experienced some understandably unpleasant side effects as a consequence of what they were taking, so he began reducing the dosage by dilution. And the astonishing, utterly counter-intuitive result was that the greater the dilution, the fewer such symptoms the patients suffered. Diluting the medicine made it more, rather than less, effective, and thus he came up with his Law of Infinitesimals.’
    Michael and I nodded as soberly as we could, but Carol’s expression was one of naked incomprehension, wondering did she hear right, wondering perhaps if her faculties just weren’t up to grasping this complicated stuff. No, Carol, pet, you heard right and your expression indicates your faculties are serving you well. Break it down: Hahnemann gave people poison, which made them ill. When they took smaller doses of poison, they felt less ill. Contra-intuitive or what! Eat less poison – feel better. What were the fucking odds? And when that’s the level of observation and deduction it started from, it’s no surprise that homeopathy later progressed to frequently prescribing the same substances to treat completely conflicting maladies. Constipation and diarrhoea, for instance, are both treatable by sulphur, as we are told on Boots’ homeopathy website.
    Sandy directed us to a machine housing a number of transparent cylinders filled with clear fluid.
    ‘Dilution enhanced the therapeutic properties of Hahnemann’s remedies, and it therefore holds that the more they are diluted, the more effective they become. You follow?’ he asked Carol.
    ‘Eh, yeah, okay,’ she stumbled.
    ‘I know, I know,’ Sandy assured her with a smile (as well as a knowing look to me). ‘We all find it hard to get our heads around at first. A lot of things in science are counter-intuitive. But as long as you follow the principle.’
    ‘Less is more,’ she suggested.
    ‘Very good. And by extrapolation, a lot less is a lot more. Following Hahnemann’s method, we take an extract of a substance, which we call the mother tincture, and we dilute it in ten parts water.’ With this, he pressed a button on the machine and we watched a small quantity of fluid siphon from one chamber into another. A second button caused the receiving chamber to suddenly vibrate, the cylinder shaken back and forth about a central vertical axis.
    ‘According to Hahnemann, this succession process is crucial, because it releases dynamic forces within the solution which are intensified with each further dilution.’
    ‘So it’s very much a case of shaken, not stirred,’ I offered.
    ‘Very good, Mr Bond,’ Sandy accepted with an approving chuckle. ‘And of course, we then repeat the process, taking the new solution and diluting an extract from it by the same ratio.’
    ‘With the therapeutic effectiveness increasing by a