The country’s medical schools were mostly commercial operations, taught by practicing doctors who picked up spare money by lecturing on the side. Standards were so abysmal that many schools did not even require a college degree for entry. Since these medical mills had no incentive to undertake serious research, medicine hovered in a twilight area between science and guesswork.

Chernow also notes that

It was deeply ironic that Rockefeller retained a residual faith in homeopathy even as he financed the world’s most sophisticated medical research operation. Periodically, he had spasms of irritation, firing off letters on the need to save homeopathy, but these outbursts quickly passed. Through his philanthropies, Rockefeller did more than anyone else to destroy homeopathy in America, and in the end he seemed powerless to stop the scientific revolution that he himself had largely set in motion.

Today, placebo-based therapies such as homeopathy survive both because there are many conditions for which medical science has no good treatment, and because many ailments go away on their own. Want to make a pile of money? Market a homeopathic back pill. According to an 1998 article in Scientific American, 80% of adults suffer from back pain at some point, and the great majority of those cases spontaneously remit.
“Take this; you’ll feel better in a couple of weeks.” You probably will — and at least it won’t hurt. But the sufferer could save money by going directly to #4 on my chart.

Unrelated remark: Your comment was temporarily lost after a database crash. I restored it from e-mail, both because it was a good comment and because I get so few real comments that I can’t afford to lose even one.

By homeopathic standards, this represents a very mild dilution. I suppose that placing the vermouth cubes into a glass and pouring gin into a different glass might be closer to achieving the proper homeopathic effect.

It’s now my second favorite remedy, after Professor Harold Hill’s “Think” system.