Homeopathy

I'll start this post by saying that the central premise of homeopathy, like chiropractic, is quackery. But just like back massage can be experienced as a therapeutic benefit, so too, homeopathy can be beneficial, if only as a placebo.

That said, I was recently reading about variolation, an old technique to innoculate against smallpox. The practice involved sticking a needle into a pustule of a smallpox patient and scarring the skin of the innoculated person. The small amount of virus transferred was too little to kill a person but enough to trigger a protective immune response. George Washington mandated smallpox innoculation for the Continental Army, which I guess is an affront to modern-day antivaxxers.

Anyway, it occurred to me that the idea of variolation is a kind of homeopathy: something that in large doses is lethal, in small doses is protective.