There’s nothing inherently wrong with believing in fairy tales. It’s when these beliefs directly clash with proven scientific facts that a problem arises. These mistaken beliefs are particularly dangerous in the medical fields. Most scientists and doctors refer to these beliefs as pseudosciences, or incorrect beliefs mistakenly believe to be based off of scientific fact. Wisely, practitioners of these pseudosciences call them “alternative medicine.” Today we’re going to dive into one such field of “alternative medicine”: homeopathy.

Homeopathy is the medical belief that “like cures like.” Meaning, that something that would cause disease or produce symptoms in a healthy person will cure a person who is sick. Homeopathy also follows the belief of “law of minimum dose,” essentially meaning that the lower the dose is, the greater the effects are. These beliefs are so absurd, you’d think that it’d be impossible for people to believe in them, yet here we are. This belief is basically like believing that to cure someone from cyanide poisoning by giving them an extremely diluted dose of cyanide. According to the NCCIH, most homeopathic remedies are “so diluted that no molecules of the original substances remain.” To me, it makes this “alternative medicine” look even more foolish than what I originally thought. All these remedies are basically sugar pills. The reason that I’m so angry about these pseudosciences is not because they are useless, it’s because they can be actively harmful. Some ingredients used in these “remedies” can include whole bees, white arsenic, and deadly nightshade. It’s also because sometimes parents that believe in homeopathy will take their children to homeopathic doctors and don’t get them the actual treatment they need. In one such case, a homeopath gave a misbehaving child a pill that contained saliva from a dog infected with rabies. Luckily, no harm came to the child, most likely because the pill contained almost no actual saliva. This is only one of many cases in which homeopathic beliefs have endangered others.