The Quackometer

Luc Montagnier is an interesting and strange character. Last year he was a shared winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine. A remarkable achievement. However, his latest research can only really be described as quite bizarre and some of his statements, are desperately and deadly worrying. So much so, that I think Montagnier ought to be the first recipient of both a Nobel and IgNobel prize. Let me explain.

In the past few weeks we have seen the announcements for the winners of the 2009 Nobel Prizes for Science. They are the highest accolade achievable by a scientist and are given to honour outstanding contributions to their field. Last year, French scientist Luc Montagnier shared the award for medicine for his part in the discovery of the HIV virus – something that has undoubtedly resulted in many lives being saved.

A few days before, we also saw announcements for the winners of the 2009 IgNobel Prizes. Lesser known, these prizes honour research that ‘cannot or should not be replicated’. The idea of the prizes is to ‘make people laugh and then make people think’. Previous winners have included decidedly odd but sensible papers on the side effects of sword swallowing and the the word "the" -- and of the many ways it causes problems for anyone who tries to put things into alphabetical order, to the completely batty papers, such as for the ‘discovery’ that “not only does water have memory, but that the information can be transmitted over telephone lines and the Internet”, from homeopathic researcher Jacques Benveniste.

In January of this year, Montagnier published quite a remarkable paper entitled, “Electromagnetic Signals Are Produced by Aqueous Nanostructures Derived from Bacterial DNA Sequences” in the Journal of Interdisciplinary Sciences: Computational Life Sciences. The headline makes a bold claim: that diluted DNA from pathogenic bacterial and viral species is able to emit specific radio waves. Furthermore, there are claims that these radio waves might be associated with 'nanostructures’ in the solution that might be able to recreate the pathogen. These radio waves do not appear to be emitted by ‘probiotic “good” bacteria’. After diluting solutions to the point to where no DNA could remain, it is claimed these ‘nanostructures’ somehow emit radio waves and recreate the pathogens. Luc Montagnier makes startling claims that,

In patients infected with HIV, EMS can be detected mostly in patients treated by antiretroviral therapy and having a very low viral load in their plasma. Such nanostructures persisting in the plasma may contribute to the viral reservoir which escapes the antiviral treatment, assuming that they carry genetic information of the virus.

The claims in the paper are simply unbelievable: that by serially diluting and agitating solutions of infectious agents, ‘nano’ structures can be set up in water that can emit specific radio frequencies and that even after filtration that should remove all traces of biological molecules, the pathogens can be cultured and detected, somehow by recreation.

At least, I think that is what is being claimed. The paper, it is fair to comment, lacks any rigour. It is a sequence of ad hoc assertions, hypotheses and post hoc rationalisations. Important experimental steps are described dismissively in a sentence and little attempt is made to describe the detail of the work.

There are many problems with the paper, not least that it is pretty much self-published in a journal without rigorous peer-review (it took two days from ‘receipt’ of the paper to publishing) and the journal was set up and edited by Montagnier himself.

I am not sure where to begin. But let me start with one massive problem that should have resulted in the paper ending up in the compost bin of science. It appears to fly in the face of one the greatest traditions of post-enlightenment thinking in that it seeks to reintroduce an anthropocentric view of the universe. The great early strides in scientific thought removed human beings from their special place in the universe. Primitive views placed us at the centre of creation with all things placed around us for our care. We were special. Gradually, we learned that the Earth was not the centre of the universe, and neither even was the Sun. We learned that we were not separate from creation, but part of a continuum of biological existence that joined all living things together. Our minds did not make us different from the rocks as we could see that biological processes differed merely in complexity and scale from the more mundane chemical and physical processes around us.

So, Montagnier is proposing that these electromagnetic signals are only given off by pathogenic organisms. This assertion cries out the question – pathogenic to whom? Are we to believe that these DNA signals are only given off by infectious agents to humans? That would be a most staggering claim. What about infectious agents for other species? Do they not get handy radio signals too? And what if a particular human has specific immunity to a virus? Does the DNA sequence somehow know that it much switch off its broadcasts?

Bonkers.

This is to leave aside how DNA could actually transmit radio waves. The generation of such a signal would require an oscillating current at the right frequency. How this could be achieved by a sequence of DNA is unanswered – probably because it is physically absurd.

The experimental apparatus itself looks decidedly amateurish with a the central detection mechanism appearing to be a coil of wire plugged into the soundcard of a PC via a device claimed to be invented by another infamous Frenchman, J Benveniste (previous IgNobel winner). Few details are given about this device.

It would appear, at first glance, to be a device designed to pick up background radio emissions. Indeed, the signals appears to be strong around the frequencies emitted by mains equipment and the paper does indeed mention that these signals disappear when attempts are removed to reduce background noise (such as by switching off other equipment). However, rather than conclude that the device is merely picking up noise, the paper asserts that the background noise is required to induce ‘resonance phenomena’. Your chin should be beginning to itch here. It does indeed look as if the experimental result are the result of digging around in the noise and finding signals at the limit of detection – a classical hallmark of pathological science where an unblinded researcher keeps probing noise until they convince themselves they are seeing signals. (see N-rays for a parallel, ‘discovered’ by yet another Frenchman, the physicist René-Prosper Blondlot.)

The paper takes even stranger twists when we look at the background to the paper. The Telegraph reported that Montagnier was in a legal battle with inventor Bruno Robert over the rights to the device that can detect the fantastical radio waves. Both Montagnier and Robert submitted patent applications for the same device:

The Telegraph makes no mention that the device is clearly crackpot. It is worth reading the patent examiner’s scathing assessment of the application, who concludes,

The invention is based on phenomena which contradict the fundamental principle of physics and of chemistry, i.e. the existence of biological or effect without an active molecule and no explanation or theoretical basis makes it impossible at the current time to explain the results obtained.

The story takes another breathtaking turn when it is realised that the device pictured above is identical to the one used by Jacques Benveniste to ‘digitise’ homeopathic signals and send them by email. IgNobel prize winning stuff. This research was replicated using the same device at the request of the United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and no signal was detected.

It would appear that neither Montagnier or Robert were the inventor, but instead, the late, great, discredited Benveniste – homeopathic apologist and experimenter into nonsense. So, the French appear to fighting over the legacy of their greatest pseudo-scientist. Montagnier is clearly dabbling in the black arts of homeopathy and the homeopaths are crowing about it. My old friend Dana Ullman, whose academic thoroughness I took apart when he declared homeopathy had saved Charles Darwin, is jumping for joy over Montagnier’s research. He is not the most self critical thinker around. Harriet Hall demolishes his claims.

So, no doubt Montagnier deserves an IgNobel prize. His research makes us laugh. His apparatus has already earned the prize when the prize is clearly for research that ‘should not be repeated’. The IgNobel committee need to ram the message home.

But the award should be also for research that then makes is think. And what I see makes me think that Montagnier could lead to seriously bad consequences.

Not content with merely trying to perpetuate the discarded nonsense of previous homeopathic quacks, he appears to picks up the ideology of the homeopathic mindset. Montagnier appears in the AIDS denialist film House of Numbers saying that HIV can be ‘cleared naturally’ by nutritional means. All it requires is to have a ‘good immune system’. I see no evidence to support such claims. Now, many scientists were misrepresented in this disingenuous film, but it looks hard to see how Montagnier was. These views are not without terrible potential consequences. Such views lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people who are dependent on governments to provide a decent level of care for people with HIV.

Montagnier’s status as a Nobel Prize winner lends a level of credence to these views that they do not deserve. His authority will be used by those who wish to exploit the vulnerable with quack cures. This is life and death stuff. Nobel prizes are the greatest scientific honour, but they also create false authorities and science, unique in human endeavours, does not need authorities. It runs on evidence, reason and critical thinking. And that is dangerously missing from Montagnier’s work.

Nobel Prize winners often feel a sense that they are freed to dream thoughts that others cannot. That is, on balance, a good thing. Science can make huge strides when people are able to think the unthinkable. But all Nobel unthinkable thoughts need not be true. In fact, very few will be. We need to be on our guard against those that exploit the false authority of the Nobel Laureate and examine all scientific claims with equal dispassion.

Labels: dana ullman, homeopathy, Luc Montagnier

 

The homeopaths, like Dana Ullman, treat original scientific works like scripture - as a source of truth. Their own Hahnemannian scriptures trump scientific knowledge and evidence at all turns. This fact exposes their pseudoscience. I bet the majority of practicing biologists have never read Darwin's Origins.

Homeopaths like the authority of scientists, celebrities and politicians. It gives them a source of validation that is independent of the reality of the world. But in doing so, they abuse truth and Darwin has been roped into this misadventure. Charles Darwin's letters have been thoroughly abused in an attempt to show that he was a supporter of homeopathy and I have shown how this is utter nonsense.

More manuscripts are now online and we can can see writings about Darwin from his colleagues and families. A biography by his son reveals this snippet and I thought it worth sharing as an insight into the man, his illness, and his mischievous humour.

Besides the holidays which I have mentioned there were his visits to the water cure. He began in 1849 when very ill suffering from constant sickness. He was urged to try to water cure by Fox (or Sulivan) and at last agreed to try Dr. Gully's establishment.1 — His letters to Fox show how much good the treatment did him: I fancy he thought that he found a cure for his troubles, which but like all other remedies it had only a transient effect on him. However he found it at first so good for him that he built himself a douche when he came home, & Parslow learned to be his bathman. He thought Dr. Gully a clever Dr but I do not think he liked him. He was repelled by all the homeopathy & spiritualism that Dr Gully favoured. — He so far humoured Dr G. as to allow himself to be examined by a medical clairvoyante. who This person who localized the mischief in the stomach, in doing so he followed as my father believed some unconscious hints from Gully or his assistant." It was I think to this clairvoyante to whom my father offered a £5 note if she could tell him the number. She scornfully refused demean herself in such a way...

Another quack who refused to be objectively tested!

Labels: dana ullman

 

There can be few comment-enabled web pages left in the world that do not testify to the fact that Dana Ullman has published his latest book: The Homeopathic Revolution: Famous People and Cultural Heroes Who Chose Homeopathy. His claim for the book is that,

It is a project that may actually change the face (and the heart) of medicine and may make homeopathy a household word.

Dramatic stuff.

I have written about the book before, a few months before publication. This was because Ullman was making claims that I found incredible. Wherever you find a promotion for the book, you will find the claim that Charles Darwin was saved by homeopathy and this allowed him to publish the Origin. Ullman goes further and says that Darwin was an advocate of homeopathy. This was going to be easily verifiable, as all of Darwin's letters and writings are available online at the Cambridge Darwin Correspondence Project.

So, I did check, and I wrote about my findings at some length. And what I found was that Darwin did nothing but ridicule homeopathy and made it very clear that he thought it was nonsense. Darwin did, at times, take homeopathic remedies. But only when convalescing at a spa near Malvern where the resident doctor made all his patients take the pills. But Darwin did this 'without an atom of faith'. It was quite clear that it would be difficult to reconcile Ullman's statements with Darwin's own stated beliefs, and it looked like we were seeing nothing but the usual homeopathic propganda.

As you might expect, Dana Ullman took exception to my analysis and claimed I had missed many references, that I was superficial and undertook inadequate scholarship, that I was partial in my quotations, and my analysis contained misinformation. He emailed me to say "my research on Darwin [has] surpassed yours by a significant degree" and,

I sincerely hope that you are a good enough man (or duck) to admit that you MAY have been a bit too rash in your previous comments. People will TRUST you more if you admit that you were wrong about something. I realize that this tends to be rare amongst quackbusters, but perhaps you are different.

Now, to be fair, I was not reading from Ullman's book - it had not been published yet - only wondering how he came to such conclusions for his promotional material. So, out of courtesy, I got hold of a copy, read it, and now am in a position to give a fuller review and see if Ullman's own evidence stands up to scrutiny.

Charles Darwin

So, let's start off with Dana Ullman's coverage of Charles Darwin.

The first mention of Darwin is in the Introduction. Ullman obviously thinks Darwin is central to his thesis. He starts off by saying that Darwin had great admiration for his homeopathic doctor and his treatments, "though these facts are scandalously missing from the history of medicine and science". Later, in the chapter on Physicians and Scientists, Ullman devotes ten pages to Darwin and homeopathy. Now, given Ullman's denunciations of my analysis of Darwin, I was expecting a lot of significant material that I had missed. But, it is just not there. However, there is a lot of insignificant material, a lot of jumping to conclusions and unsubstantiated speculations. This appears to be the greater scholarship that Ullman alludes to.

So, Ullman readily admits that Darwin was openly scathing about homeopathy and that he never attributed any of his health improvements to homeopathy. The evidence for this is overwhelming. Nonetheless, Ullman claims that Darwin's healthier moments during his long illness could be attributed to homeopathy. Ullman provides no evidence for this assertion. Darwin did suffer a long standing illness. The illness was sometimes totally debilitating, and regularly he experienced periods of remission. One time he got better was when Darwin was recuperating at Dr Gully's hydrotherapy spa. Now because Dr Gully gave Darwin homeopathy remedies, Ullman then contends that the homeopathy caused Darwin's health improvements.

This is nothing other than the same systematic logical mistake that all homeopaths make - post hoc ergo propter hoc - "after this, therefore because of this". Just because one event follows another does not mean that one event caused another. The entire foundation of homeopathy is built on this logical fallacy, and Ullman makes no allowance for it. The nature of Darwin's illness is unknown; many have speculated as to what it was, from an illness picked up in South America to purely psychosomatic illness. Therefore, to make any assessment of how Darwin's illness should have progressed is to overstretch our knowledge of that illness. The fact that Darwin felt better after spending time at a relaxing spa should not surprise us. Ullman, however, finds it difficult to conceive of any explanation beyond a homeopathic cure.

One part of Ullman's analysis I thought was particularly misleading. He says,

After just a month of treatment, Charles had to admit that Gully's treatments were not quackery after all.

I emailed Dana to ask for a reference for this and to state how he came to this conclusion. He did have a reference, but it was quite clear that Darwin was talking specifically about the hydrotherapy treatments and made absolutely no mention of homeopathy. Darwin's opinions of the sugar pills appears to have been steadfast.

Ullman goes on to explore an area I did not; that is Darwin's research on the response of the insectivorous plant Drosera (sundew) to dilute ammonia salt solutions. Darwin was shocked at the response of the plant's tentacles to ever increasingly dilute solutions. Ullman pounces on this as proof of Darwin wanting to research homeopathic solutions. There are three things wrong with this: one, Darwin never says anything about his research being homeopathic in nature; two, homeopaths tell us that dilute solutions are not homeopathic - succussion is necessary (apparently); and thirdly, the solutions are still light by homeopathic standards - homeopaths dilute beyond the point that the original chemical will be present. Ullman makes a similar error on his own websites and elsewhere in his book when he calls homeopathy the science of nanopharmacology. Now diluting to the nano level (a billionth) is still well within the realms of standard analytical physical chemistry. Measuring dosages at the nano-mole level is now standard laboratory practice. Homeopathic dilutions make nano doses look positively gargantuan. I have no idea why Ullman wants to insists on such terminology when it is so obviously misleading.

Darwin was shocked at the results of his dilution experiments, not because he thought that it confirmed homeopathy, but because he did not expect such dilute substances to have such a dramatic effect. This was new science and he was instinctively cautious. Darwin wanted to replicate his own work and confirm his findings. He doubted his own experience, experiments and capabilities and made doubly sure he was not deceiving himself. This is something that homeopaths could learn from.

And on to Ullman's worst crime in this chapter. Ullman insists that Darwin was a supporter of homeopathy despite all the evidence to the contrary and he does this by asserting that he was afraid of what this peers would think if he said such a thing. Ullman does not present any evidence to back this up. I find this a terrible besmirchment of Darwin's character. One thing that you cannot say about Darwin was that he was unduley cowered in the fear of what the establishment might think of him. He did not launch his theory of evolution into a compliant and accepting orthodoxy. Darwin had to win over his scientific peers, the establishments of church and state, and society as a whole, through sheer strength of argument alone. Darwin was well aware of the implications of his work and how that might threaten the established view of a natural world created by a benevolent god. It took courage and much deliberation to take on this worldview and it is inconceivable that Darwin would quibble over a trifle such as homeopathy even if he did believe in it. No, Darwin knew homeopathy was nonsense. All the evidence points to that. Any other conclusion is just perverse.

Adolf Hitler

For me, in his treatments of Darwin, Ullman looses all credibility in his analysis. It would be enough to stop here in this review, but his analyses of Adolf Hitler is in some ways even more perverse.

Now, Ullman's book is about famous people and cultural heroes. Obviously, Ullman does not see Hitler as a cultural hero and he makes this clear. But in doing so, he then feels it necessary to show that Hitler was not an advocate for homeopathy and never benefited from it. But again, this is in the face of contradictory evidence that Ullman himself presents.

In the chapter Politicians and Peacemakers, Ullman describes how Hitler took nux vomica and belladonna, two staples of every homeopath's pharmacy, every day for nine years up to his suicide. Unlike Darwin, Hitler was convinced that these pills were saving his life. Now, to get around the rather nasty conclusion that this supremely evil man was a supporter of homeopathy, Ullman tells us that it was unlikely that Hitler's pills had undergone the proper dilution and succussion process, and were therefore not properly homeopathic. This contrasts rather starkly with Ullman's insistence that Darwin's simple dilutions were part of some homeopathic experimentation.

But the rather nasty conclusion is, and at risk of invoking Godwin's Law, that the Nazi state was rather enraptured with homeopathy. It would be surprising if it was not. German nationalism latched onto all sorts of mystical and distinctly Germanic notions during these terrible decades. The fact that homeopathy was of German origin no doubt had some bearing on its adoption by the various Nazi doctors in attendance to Hitler. Ullman insists that the pattern of prescribing remedies to Hitler did not match standard homeopathic practice, but one must also take into account that Hitler's doctors would also have done anything the Führer desired. These were not standard prescribing times.

It is difficult to come away with any other impression that Ullman is twisting his own presented evidence to reach whatever conclusion he chooses. If there is any credibility left, it is dashed when you note that one of the sources that Ullman references for his information on Adolf Hitler is the discredited historian David Irving.

'No Smoke Without Fire'

After looking at these examples, it is difficult to take any of the biographical details and conclusions seriously. But in a very important regard, this is utterly immaterial because it does not matter one jot what Darwin or Hitler thought about their experiences with homeopathy. Their opinions do not prove or disprove whether homeopathy is nothing but nonsense.

In order to judge Ullman's book, we ought to see if Ullman succeeds in the task he sets himself. The subtiltle of the book is Why Famous People and Cultural Heroes Choose Homeopathy? Does Ullman answer this question? In short, no.

Ullman assumes the answer from the start, and it is the answer of the commited homeopath - that homeopathy is a powerful healing force. And so in doing so, he fails to address the obvious problems with taking a string of historially based anecdotes. In looking at peoples accounts of homeopathy, you have to take into account the various ways in which people might acquire mistaken beliefs. Ullman does not do this and so we have no way of weighing the importance of this mass of ancdotes.

Even homeopaths do not deny that people are subject to a placebo response when taking medicines. This can be personally interpreted as a positive healing response to an otherwise inert pill. Also, many illnesses, being cyclical in nature, allow natural disease remissions to be attributed to the cure. This is almost undoubteldy what was going on in Darwin's case. When he was at his worst, he went to see Dr Gully. Any subsequent improvement would be attributed to whatever Dr Gully was doing - Darwin thought it was the hydrotherapy; Ullman the homeopathy. There are other ways of being fooled, of course. There is no need to go into them here. The point is that Ullman should have considered them in detail in his book if he wants us to take his mass of anecdotes as serious evidence. The fame and celebrity of Ullman's cultural heroes make no difference to the importance of these subjects' beliefs. If one person can hold a mistaken belief about a healing experience then so can thousands of others. Mere numbers make no difference. It does not enhance the quality of the evidence in anyway. A common delusion can produce millions of the deluded.

This point is noted by the writer of Ullman's foreward, Dr Peter Fisher, Clinical Director of the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital, when he says,

Of course, the fact that the extraordinary range of talented, intelligent, and independent-minded people depicted in this book benefited from homeopathy does not represent a scientific argument.

I would agree fully, but maybe just caveat that these people believed they benefited. But rather bizarrely, Fisher then immediately says,

"but, it is a strong 'no smoke without fire' argument".

This sounds so out of place for a man who considers himself to be a man of science. It is the talk of gossiping schoolgirls in an unsupervised playground. Of course there can be smoke without fire. It is entirely possible for large numbers of people to hold entirely mistaken beliefs, even intelligent celebrities and politicians. And so, this book has the significance of the nauseating and suffocating mobile wedding disco smoke machine, designed to hide the balding uncoolness of the past-it DJ. The book is a 400 page fig-leaf and Ullman is using his celebrity gossip and bizarre interpretations to obscure the embarrassing lack of convincing evidence that would show us homeopathy is nothing but a discredited philosophy, practiced by scientifically illiterate narcissists, using inert sugar pills.

As such, this book is not going to 'change the face and heart of medicine'. It is of interest only to those who want their prejudices confirmed and their delusions massaged. To really understand why so many people can so easily be sucked into the irrationality of alternative medicine is going to take another book. There may be a few of those along soon.

************************************************************************************

See also Orac's review of excerpts from the Homeopathic Revolution.

Labels: celebrity quackery, dana ullman, homeopathy

 

The Internet is a wonderful thing. It allows you check stuff, like the claims of quacks, in a way that was not possible just a few years ago. This blog entry would have taken many months of library work and correspondence without the web and some of its amazing content, and now I can do it between mowing the lawn and popping down the pub for a pint.

Dana Ullman (8 Canards), an American homeopath, is just about to publish a book. Titled, The Homeopathic Revolution: Famous People and Cultural Heroes Who Chose Homeopathy he describes it as,

the most important work of my life. It is a project that may actually change the face (and the heart) of medicine and may make homeopathy a household word. This is a bold statement...and yet, I sense deeply that it is true. The feedback that I have received to date has further confirmed this.

The book is given a forward by the Queen's Physician and Clinical Director of the London Homeopathic Hospital, Dr Peter Fisher.

Now, it is a usual quack's trick, when you have little scientific evidence to back up your claims, to fall back on celebrity endorsements. This book is a big list of celebrities, politicians and other prominent figures who have allegedly been duped into using homeopathy. His number one claim is,

Charles Darwin could not have written Origin of Species without the homeopathic treatment that he received from Dr. Gully (based on Darwin's own letters!).

This is a very important claim as obviously Darwin is a hugely important icon within the wider sceptic community. Darwin's achievements are a huge intellectual monument to the power of rationality over superstition, religion and unreason. To claim that Darwin is on the side of homeopaths ought to be a big blow to us doubters. Ullman's claims are spreading quickly amongst the homeopathic community to tell of the revelation that the Great Scientist is actually on their side.

But is this true? Well an hour on a sunny Saturday afternoon reveals a lot about Dana Ullman's research methods for his 'most important work'. You see, just about everything that Darwin ever wrote is available online. Not just his books, but his letters, and letters sent to him. The words to and from scientists, doctors, his family and wife are all there - we can peer into his personal thoughts. The University of Cambridge gives us the Darwin Correspondence Project. We can check out Dana's claims.

So, a bit of background. Darwin was a sickly man for most of his life. He suffered from stomach cramps, vomiting and other symptoms that made it difficult for him to work. Some have suggested that his symptoms were brought on by the stress of work and the difficulty of facing the controversial nature of what he was doing. It has been suggested too that he was suffering from a disease he picked up when on his Beagle voyages in South America. Whatever the cause, his doctors could not do anything for him.

Eventually, he sought the services of a Dr James Gully of Malvern who offered a treatment based on bathing and douching in cold water. In a letter to Richard Owen, coiner of the term dinosaur and founder of the Natural History Museum in London, Darwin wrote,

I have resolved to go this early summer & spend two months at Malvern & see whether there is any truth in Gully & the water cure: regular Doctors cannot check my incessant vomiting at all.

Dr Gully was an unconventional doctor with unconventional methods, including the water cure (hydropathy) and homeopathy. What Darwin makes quite clear in this letter and others is that he is interested in seeing if the Water Cure works. Darwin demonstrates he knows about homeopathy and has a high degree of derision for it. His first impressions at Dr Gully's hospital are expressed to a cousin,

Dr Smith, I think, is sensible, but he is a Homœopathist!!

Unfortunately for Darwin, it would appear that the regime at the hospital pretty much ensured he had to go along with the homeopathic beliefs of the doctors, as he says to his sister Susan,

I grieve to say that Dr Gully gives me homoœopathic medicines three times a day, which I take obediently without an atom of faith.

Charles is an unwilling participant in homeopathic cures. However, his stay in Malvern appears to do the trick and his health improves somewhat. In a letter to the Cambridge geologist, Adam Sedgwick, he writes,

I most sincerely hope that your health is pretty good: mine is much better, thanks to the inestimable Water Cure, than it has been for several years, but I see that I shall never have a sound stomach & therefore never be really strong again.

If Darwin's health problems were related to overwork and stress then some time away from his work and a rest in the countryside may well have done the world of good. Nonetheless, Darwin attributes his improvement to Dr Gully and the Water Cure because he continues to take the treatment over the coming years.

His thoughts on homeopathy were clearly mocking,

You were quite right to send me sneers versus Mr Scott— I have amused them here with Homœopathetic stories.— My Father observes that as long as he can remember, there has always been something wonderful, more or less of the same kind, going on & there has always been people weak enough to believe & he says, slapping both knees, he supposes there always will be—so that he thinks Mr Scott no greater a fool than the other past & future fools; a more charitable belief, than I can indulge in

It's good to see a glimpse of Darwinian humour with his 'Homœopathetic ' jibe. I wonder what Darwin would make of the 'future fools' who still follow homeopathy despite the incredible advances made over the last 150 years in physics, chemistry and medicine?

There is a dichotomy in Darwin's view of Dr Gully. It is expressed well in a letter to his second cousin and collaborator, William Fox,

You speak about Homœopathy; which is a subject which makes me more wrath, even than does Clair-voyance: clairvoyance so transcends belief, that one's ordinary faculties are put out of question, but in Homœopathy common sense & common observation come into play, & both these must go to the Dogs, if the infinetesimal doses have any effect whatever. How true is a remark I saw the other day by Quetelet, in respect to evidence of curative processes, viz that no one knows in disease what is the simple result of nothing being done, as a standard with which to compare Homœopathy & all other such things. It is a sad flaw, I cannot but think in my beloved Dr Gully, that he believes in everything— when his daughter was very ill, he had a clair-voyant girl to report on internal changes, a mesmerist to put her to sleep—an homœopathist, viz Dr. Chapman; & himself as Hydropathist! & the girl recovered.

Darwin obviously sees Dr Gully as a friend, but just cannot understand why he would believe in such an obvious nonsense. What is also enlightening is Darwin's understanding of how you might make a start at a trial of homeopathy. Homeopathy makes claims that can be tested, despite its inherent implausibility. And, he fully recognises that anecdotal evidence is not enough. This is well before the invention and standardisation of the Randomised Controlled Trial. Homeopathy might well be the same as 'doing nothing', and you need to fully understand how a disease would take its own course to assess claims of efficacy.

Unfortunately, his trust and friendship in Dr Gully took a turn to the tragic. His daughter Annie, who he adored, became very ill with extreme vomiting. Fearing she had the same illness as himself, he put her in the care of the Dr Gully. The anguish in Darwin is plain in his letter to his wife,

Sometimes Dr. G. exclaims she will get through the struggle; then, I see, he doubts.— Oh my own it is very bitter indeed.

Despite all of Gully's quackery, little Annie died. It was a turning point in Darwin's life. No longer could he believe in a benevolent god. Intellectually, he was ready to publish his life's work that would provide the underpinning of modern biology.

Dana Ullman's claim is that Darwin was cured by a homeopath and without homeopathy we would have no Origin. The truth is that homeopathy may have played a pivotal role, but only in its utter failure to save the life of Darwin's precious daughter. Darwin was torn with doubts whilst working on his theory about the effect it would have on his wife, who was devout, and on the religious authority and structures in society in general. Having his own faith ripped away was an important removal of a barrier to publication.

Of course, the death of children in the Victorian age was indeed common. Scientific medicine was in its infancy and had barely made an impact on the lives of people. We were at the time when it was first realised that cholera could be stopped by reducing infection from contaminated water sources. A real understanding of disease was emerging and it had nothing to do with vital forces, miasms and the humours. But, this still was the golden age of quackery with there being no clear divide between doctors and quacks. As far as Darwin was concerned, Gully was trying plausible but new treatments, like the Water Cure, alongside utter nonsense, like homeopathy.

But it is indeed Darwin that paved the way for the emergence of modern medicine. By providing us with a naturalistic and non-supernatural view of our origins, Darwin placed humans firmly within the realm of phenomena that could be examined and understood by science. The careful and methodical work that he performed on barnacles, earth worms and pigeons could be put to work on understanding the human body. Before the publication of the Origin, humans were spiritual creatures under the mercy of 'God's will'. Annie's death may have had wider implication for us all.

So, what will Dana Ullman have to say in support of his claim that we owe Darwin's works to homeopathy? It is true that Darwin took homeopathic cures, but it is also obvious that he only did this as part of the hospital regime he was in and that he was utterly contemptuous of the practice. We know that Darwin felt somewhat better after his stay at the Malvern hospital, but Darwin believed this to be due to the Water Cure. Darwin self administered the cure over time whenever he felt he needed it. He did not do the same with homeopathy. Maybe Dana will claim that it actually was the homeopathy that helped Darwin whether he believed it or not. But this would just be the usual homeopaths' mistake of post hoc reasoning and practitioners' wishful thinking as there is not a shred of evidence that this is true. For Ullman's 'most important work' and a book that will 'change the face (and the heart) of medicine', it would appear that this book is no more important, or intellectually rigorous, than the celebrity endorsements of quackery found in Hello, OK! or the Daily Mail.

Maybe Dana has found some letters that do support the idea that Darwin was a fan? But I have not found them and I have been through nearly eighty letters of his that talk about Dr Gully and ten or so more that talk about homeopathy. I have found nothing to suggest that Darwin was a believer.

And the beauty of it is, and the moral of the story, is that you do not have to take my word for it. You can go and check too.

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My full review of Dana Ullman's book can be found here.

Labels: dana ullman, homeopathy