Customer Reviews

Homeopathy: How It Really Works

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A really smart, well-trained scientist takes a look at a really puzzling question. How does Homeopathy work? On a variety of controversial topics, many book reviews say something like `this book tells it like it is'; but this actually means that the book says what the reviewer already believes. Shelton's book is not about homeopaths offering testimonials to their work, nor is it about physicians' putting-down this field. Instead, it is a clear description of the way a clear-headed, unbiased thinker examines a subject.

Shelton's book is engaging to read and easy to use. Each chapter is divided into sections. Central ideas are highlighted and bulleted. I especially liked the "dialogues" between homeopaths and skeptics that brings to life their different viewpoints. It's to the point and straightforward about homeopathy in specific and scientific theories in general. Finally, the book includes an easy-to-use glossary of common homeopathy terms. This book is a must read for anyone that uses or considers using homeopathic remedies. It is also an eye opener for any healer or any doctor willing to take the time to examine what their treatments really offer to their patients. Most important, it is a real help to all of us, who at one time or another, for some reason or another, become patients ourselves. What kind of treatment would you want? Here's a book that gives us a way to answer that question.

Whether you are the kind of person that loved science in school, or found that it left you cold, you will enjoy the way a genuine scientist and teacher like Shelton examines a complex subject. He looks at the evidence. He stays both open and skeptical. He offers alternative explanations to what he discovers. He concludes by saying that if new evidence proves him wrong in the future, he would be "delighted," because that is how science makes progress. After reading Shelton's book, you know that it what he really believes.

Helpful, insightful, and well thought out. I highly recommend it for anyone interested in learning about what Homeopathy is really all about.

Extremely well-researched book into how homeopathy works. History, testimonials, thorough bibliography. Most important, applies scientific methods and criteria to all aspects of homeopathy. Conclusion: it works, it helps people, but not for the reasons people who use it think it does. Read it to see why!

Firstly, I am a homeopathic physician, thus my bias is clear. At first read of this book, it appears that the author is really trying to give homeopathy a fair look. But his thesis as to what really happens in homeopathy is entirely conjecture. What I mean is there is essentially one chapter that could be argued is "scientific" - the one where he discusses the studies about homeopathy. However, there are now hundreds of scientific studies, many of which are well done and positive for homeopathy. His review of the scientific literature about homeopathy is way too brief and superficial to be taken seriously.

Don't get me wrong, I don't understand how homeopathy works myself. But this is also true for many common drugs on the market. What I see in the clinic day in and day out can't be explained by this author's nicely packaged ideas. I and many homeopaths could cite cure after cure of infants, animals, and chronic intractable diseases. Of course anything can be explained away, but when you see something and experience it on a daily basis it becomes impossible to explain away with such simplistic theories.

The thrust of the book is that 100% of all homeopathic outcomes are due to everything BUT the homeopathic medicines. He offers up the placebo theory or that chronic diseases go away on their own. He is being sloppy here, because many of his theoretical explanations apply to all forms of medicine. He never approaches how homeopathy really exists in the clinic, but how he assumes it does. What I mean is he never explains how homeopathic vets get the results they do. Or how long term cures of chronic diseases happen on a regular basis in a homeopathic clinic.

His explanations of how homeopathy works is limited to whatever he could reason, or figure out in his head, or explain away. But it is all cerebral and theoretical. It is like trying to understand how something works without every really experiencing it or interviewing anyone who has. It's not hard to make up explanations when you have no actual experience - you can make up whatever you want. This author has gone to great lengths to devise all kinds of interesting theories - but they are just that, theories.

I see many patients who have been chronically ill for decades. They've been through all the best that modern medicine has to offer - often with minimal results, no results at all, or they only got worse from modern medicine. Yet homeopathy has helped them again and again and again. This is not true of all my cases - of course I also have many disappointing failures.

Yet, I've seen patients with severe PTSD who have had insomnia for decades begin to sleep within weeks of the beginning of treatment. Patients with bulimia for eight or more years abruptly stop bingeing and purging within a month or two of the beginning of treatment. I've seen children with Asperger's syndrome with very unfortunate symptoms resolve most of their severe symptoms and limitations. I've seen patients with severe daily panic disorder who've had complete resolution of all their symptoms - the same exact results with severe clinical depression. Adolescents who've been cutting on themselves or punching themselves - completely stopped. I could go on and on.

All the results above were patients I treated for years, the results held for many years and became self sustaining. The author would say all the above were because I changed their diet or lifestyle - But I don't do any diet or lifestyle counseling - only homeopathy. He would theorize that all results were due to placebo. But if this was true, how come patients didn't get any placebo results from conventional medicine - despite years of taking the drugs? Most of the above patients were true believers in the conventional approach. Obviously the drugs failed, but how come they didn't get a placebo response from conventional treatment in all those years?

In addition, many of my patients were very skeptical of homeopathy. They were only coming because everything they tried before failed. The authors next theory would be that they'd been sick so long, that finally the disease simply burned itself out and self resolved. He would say my counseling skills made these diseases and disorders resolve and not return. However, I do almost no counseling with my patients. I mostly only listen and ask some questions about their fears, where the pain is located, etc. Besides, can counseling make 20 years of insomnia go away, reverse hypothyroidism, chronic hypertension or migraines?

If he or modern medicine would take the time to actually sit down in a few busy homeopathic clinics and really watch what was occurring, then they'd be very hard pressed to explain everything so simplistically. But this is highly unlikely, as it is much easier to simply assume something you don't understand is false, and then explain it away from an intellectual standpoint.

Of course this is not unique, I do this, we all do this. Where this gets us into trouble is when we close our minds about something as important as healing, then there can be unfortunate consequences. In addition, if we hide our close-mindedness under the cloak of "science" it tends to make people lazy - they assume it is real and stop thinking for themselves. This does far more damage.

To recap, if this author had taken the time to sit in on several homeopaths sessions and see for himself what REALLY happens in a homeopathic practice, he would have come to very different conclusions. Unfortunately, the author decided that homeopathy can't possibly work, then he devised theories to justify his belief. That is essentially what this book offers.

The author uses (very) bad science to make his opinion sound factual. People who have not studied homeopathy have no way of knowing that he left out huge historical cures and untold numbers of modern research experiments.

But just know this: dairy cows don't respond to placebo's, and neither do infants. Furthermore, chronic disease doesn't go away by itself, that's why it's called "chronic."

This book is not grounded in science and is not honest.

A truly scientific approach to explaining homeopathy is provided by the book "The Emerging Science of Homeopathy." But it's heavy going for a lay person.