"I don't use homeopathic remedies. But I think one of the ways they help is to keep parents away from "actual" medicine which may be more harmful in the long run. I'm thinking of the overuse of paracetamol and anti-biotics in children. Ear infections for example are often largely self-limiting, and many GPs will say (in fact I think there was a study) that use of anti-biotics shortens the infection length by approx 24 hours. That's not really worth a trip to the doctor and five days of wobbly anti-biotic use - much better to let the child beat the infection without them. Similarly Calpol: a raised temperature is often, if not usually, beneficial rather than dangerous. Calpol and ABs together can lead to a debilitating cycle of antibiotics, poor nutrition absorption, reinfection, more calpol, reduced temp so the body can't fight the infection, more ABs, more diarrhoea, etc.
Homeopathy and a watchful parent would be much better here - it just allows the body to get better on its own, a tremendous boost."
Absolutely. I agree with ALL of that-apart from the addition of homeopathy. If you give a child a pill, whatever it is, you are not telling a child that its body is a fantastic thing that usually knows how to fix itself- you are telling it that it needs pills to mend it. And parents who use homeopathy, in my experience, use it for a wide range of what I would consider normal parts of the human condition that users of conventional medicine wouldn't dream of "medicating" for.