HappySqurriel said:
It is fairly widely accepted that sometime in the past 100 years (or so) we passed a point where the medical treatment you received from a doctor was more likely to do good than harm. At the turn of the last century practices like bloodletting and the use of leeches had finally effectively died out, and we were really starting to see the widespread use of more modern techniques, but the tools, techniques and medicines were still very primitive which limited the effectiveness. Consider (for a moment) that blood transfusions didn't become safe (ish) in humans until 1901 when human blood types were discovered, and a blood transfusion opened people up to the possibility of getting communicable blood borne diseases until the 1980s. |
Yeah in the 19th and early 20th century it was safer to get treated at a homeopathic hospital than a normal hospital. Because homeopathic medicine doesn't do you any harm (its just a sugar pill) where as bloodletting and other practices of the time did do you a lot of harm. That isn't the case any more though and there is no evidence to suggest homeopathy works better than a normal placebo.
