L’homéopathie mène au pire II: fighting fire with fire

Image via Wikipedia

I’ve read some pretty extreme gibbering lunacy on the Internet. I’ve occasionally come across some very nasty stuff that still haunts my memory. However, I think this is the first time I’ve come across a weirdo so completely, dangerously, out on a fucking limb as this one:

• On The Treatment of Burns Hpathy Ezine, April, 2008

It’s WTF on a colossal scale. There is enough Stupid to power a country the size of Belgium for 1,000 years. It also contains a description of what is at best unwitting cruelty to someone who should have received medical attention. It starts badly enough:

How do you treat a burn? Almost everyone, if you ask them for the first response required in the treatment of a burn, will tell you, “Put it in cold water…”.

Actually, that’s bollocks: most people who haven’t had first aid training will say you should hold it under a running cold tap, whereas those who have learned some first aid will say the water should not be too cold, presumably because of the risk of shock if the burn covers a sizeable area. Running water, not still, as this is more efficient for cooling. That’s important. The article goes on to say:

In my first year of homoeopathic training a general discussion led the lecturer to describe a treatment for burns. He explained that he had been dining with a friend who had burnt herself and had immediately, to his horror, held the burnt area of her hand in the heat of a candle for a little while. The friend had then explained to him that the normal treatment of using cold water was ineffective, but that the application of heat to a burn meant that it would not blister, and although it did hurt more on the initial application it healed far more quickly and painlessly thereafter.

That’s the WTFometer off the scale already. I won’t even go into the old bullshittery of trotting out unverifiable anecdote as incontrovertible proof. You have to be seriously reality-challenged to believe that burning an injury further will actually make it better.

The normal treatment of running tepid water for at least five minutes on minor burns is very effective indeed, let us be quite clear about this. Applying heat to a burn will just make it worse and increase the risk of permanent damage and/or scarring. It is also unnecessarily painful: another example of the old lie the quacksters trot out that something hurting more means it’s getting better in a mystically superior way. Next up, the obligatory vitalistic brainwank:

His explanation was that left alone a burn, ‘burnt’, as in the vital force would produce heat. By applying cold water this burning effect was reduced and the vital force had to summon even more heat. If instead we assist the vital force by applying heat the job would be done more quickly.

What the ever-lovin’ fuck? Does she treat broken bones by hitting them with a hammer? Revive someone saved from drowning by shoving their head in a bucket of water? That would be just as logical. The lunatic responsible for this whackjobbery then goes on to describe an accident where she accidentally plunged her hand into boiling fat (presumably heated to above 100°C) and found the pain relieved by holding her hand in warm water. Well, yes. Of course it was. Water run out of a hot tap into a cold sink is still a lot cooler than a fat burn, you dodo.

Incidentally, “the vital force had to summon even more heat”? How in the name of sanity would it do this? After drawing a pentacle? Or does it merely require its presence in a court of law?

She then tries the same trick with a scald (and here we go again: an extra WTF point for the nonsense term “double-boiled water”). From her story, she has given erroneous first aid advice to her own daughter, whom she has no doubt brainwashed well. When she receives a phone call to say there’s been an accident and the dip-it-in-hot-water trick has, predictably, not worked, all she does is give magic water. No attempt to treat the injury immediately, even though this is essential to reduce the extent of it. Nothing to relieve the pain (well, that last is typical of woomeisters). Look at the photo of the blister. That girl should have been taken to A&E. If the correct first-aid treatment of holding the hand under tepid running water for at least 5 minutes had been observed, injury, suffering and the risk of infection would all have been severely reduced.

The second photo shows a fair amount of scarring, which Genius doesn’t seem, or want, to notice.

No, this clown doesn’t worry about having maybe got or done something wrong. The ‘running water to cool burns and scalds trick’ has been around for centuries, possibly millennia, but for once the Ancient Wisdom gambit is of no interest to our fuckwit homeopath (for yes, she’s a professional charlatan, not one of yer amateur dabblers). Hahnemann to the rescue! Hahnemann claimed:

but they take a somewhat longer time to do so if we employ cold water in order to give relief at first

and maintained that this is easily verifiable. It takes greatness to advance a revolutionary theory that flies in the face of conventional wisdom; it takes an idiot to defend an assertion that is demonstrably false.

Hahnemann was an idiot.

Bartlett’s daughter should be extremely grateful that her woo-ridden mother did not have access to hot alcohol or oil of turpentine. I cannot believe I read that.

People like Feonna Bartlett are a menace to their own children.

Related articles

• Too hot to handle? How your hands help you decide if a burn needs medical attention (sea2skyservices.com)
• How can I treat a first degree burn? (zocdoc.com)
• Homeopath says to treat a burn… burn it some more (sciblogs.co.nz)