Do you think flower remedies work?
Apparently, Edward Bach, a bacteriologist trained in homeopathy and created some bacterial homeopathic remedies. He then branched out, says Science-based Medicine. He purportedly used his intuition to access a psychic connection to plants.
“He would hold his hand over different plants to see which one affected his emotional state, and he would collect the dew from that plant to use as a remedy,” says SBM.
The Wikipedia entry for Bach says the remedies are aimed not at curing disease but at rescuing you from emotional and spiritual woes: stress, insomnia, anxiety etc. There are no definitive trials to show that they do anything and certainly not that they help by offering you a psychic connection to plants.
Bach flower remedies are a 50:50 solution of brandy and water, and are said to work by transmitting a vibrational energy through the memory of water. This water being, not the plant sap or anything with perhaps some herbal potential, but simply the dew that has condensed on the bloom.
Bach explains the science underpinning the products in his 1936 book The Twelve Healers:
“From time immemorial it has been known that Providential Means has placed in Nature the prevention and cure of disease, by means of divinely enriched herbs and plants and trees. The remedies of Nature given in this book have proved that they are blest above others in their work of mercy; and that they have been given the power to heal all types of illness and suffering.”
Genuine herbal medicine often (not always) has physiologically active plant components on its side. Indeed, it has been estimated that around 3 or 4 of every ten pharmaceutical products has a direct natural product origin. Homeopathy is pure (but infinitely dilute) quackery. Flower remedies by contrast take sCAM (spurious complementary and alternative medicine) to a whole new level by attempting to infuse divine intervention and claims of providence into the remedies.
So, now, do you think flower remedies work? Bloomin’ idiotic if you ask me.