The popular Mexican saying “¡Ni con chochos!” hints at a cultural faith in the improbable: if something can’t be done even with the help of chochos — those tiny, sugar-based homeopathic lumps or balls — then it truly is impossible.
This belief rests on a fascinating paradox, as these pills contain no active pharmaceutical ingredient. Yet, in Mexico, homeopathy is officially recognized within the healthcare system, with over a million people relying on it.
Homeopathy goes back to 1796 and the German physician, Samuel Hahnemann. A patient with sniffles and a sore throat may be given a small bottle of alcohol (with or without the chochos) containing a minute, diluted and rediluted quantity of Allium cepa, Latin for onion. Five drops of this liquid under the tongue is meant to send a message to the patient’s mind: “We have a problem here; I have a cold; my eyes are watering; I’m sneezing.”
Hopefully, the body’s self-healing system gets the message and sends reinforcements to fix the problem.
In many cases, this works. If not, the patient may try another remedy — perhaps Aconitum napellus (the highly toxic wolfsbane flower). Unlike a prescription medicine, the drops or chochos are not meant to fix the problem but merely to wake the body up and tell it to do its job.
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