"I once had a girl . . .

Samuel Hahnemann

Founder of Homeopathy

Wikipedia

. . . or should I say, she once had me."

That girl believed in homeopathic treatment for what ails you, and I went along with it for the sake of our Schweiz-o-phrenic relationship. Little good that did me in the summer of 1988, despite my best effort. I guess I ought to have made less of a good effort - a whole lot less. A miniscule amount. Or perhaps an infinitesimal amount of a bad effort! In conformity with homeopathic principles, of course.

Anyway, just thinking about that issue - namely, the best way to have dealt homeopathically with that Schweiz-o-phrenic relationship - led me to reflect on the larger issue of homeopathy itself, including its purported validity, and thus eventually to seek advice from the redoubtable Dr. H. Albertus Boli, expert on all things homeopathic. In checking out his particular views on the validity of homeopathy, I saw that he had posted a public service announcement warning about an overdose of homeopathic medicine that had left hundreds of skeptical scientists 0.000,000,000,000,000,01% dead.

Naturally, I was alarmed! In homeopathy, an underdose is an overdose, and I'd come into minimal contact with scientists in the course of my own research, and I might have unwittingly underdosed on homeopathic medicine myself and could be suffering from a non-life-threatening condition in miniscule form. I could even be one-hundredth of a millionth of a billionth dead myself! What was I to do? How could I ensure my mental health with respect to homeopathy? I suspected that utter skepticism was the best solution, but how was I to go about attaining it? Believe a tiny bit in homeopathy? Or disbelieve an enormous amount? I checked with the good doctor:

Dr. Boli, what remedy would you consider better for curing trust in homeopathy, a tiny dose of diluted fanatic belief administered once and only once or an enormous dose of skeptical arguments administered daily for several days?

Dr. Boli offered his considered advice: Distrust all of it. Just kidding. Actually, he favors infinitesimal doses of belief administered thousands upon thousands of times over the course of a single day. Well, that would certainly sicken a man on homeopathy, but I know enough math to realize that an infinitesimal is nothing at all. One such non-dose would thus surely suffice. I therefore tried it, and that one non-dose seemed to work! I let Dr. Boli know:

Thanks. I feel better already. Perhaps homeopathic cures work most effectively when not used at all!

We'll have to wait and see, of course, just to be sure, but I think I'm more objective now, having so recently refined my skepticism through that single non-dose, and I therefore conclude that the best homeopathic solution to that Schweiz-o-phrenic relationship way back in the summer of 1988 would have been a total non-dose administered the whole summer long . . .