Good morning [%first_name |Dear Reader%],

There is a reason why fairytales are the most popular kind of stories. 

They sell hope—their miraculous climaxes defying all logic, but still testaments to how there’s always a chance to win, whatever the odds and whoever the adversary. 

Miraculous here, of course, usually means magic. And magic has a power all its own when it comes to storytelling. Deep, powerful, eternal… and a way for any story to shrug off the inconvenience of harsh reality. 

And The Fairytale is a trope that just keeps on reinventing itself. 

But how, you might ask, is any of this relevant to the world of business? That’s the dominion of harsh reality and its minions, a world of numbers—prices, costs, revenues, profits… And you’d be right. Usually. 

However, in this edition, I’ll tell you a little bit about a multi-billion dollar business that is built entirely on the power of magic and hope (and storytelling). 

As we kickstart World Homeopathy Awareness Week (organised by the World Homeopathy Awareness Organization) on Sunday, this and the next edition of Inciting Incident will decode how a stream of ‘medicine’ that has repeatedly proven to be nothing more than pseudoscience continues to not just survive, but thrive. This, despite the fact that its critics are getting stronger. 

Today, I will take you through how the story of homeopathy has evolved globally, outside India’s borders. And next week, we’ll take a look at the narratives that Indian homeopathy businesses weave closer to home. 

Let’s dive in.

Homeopathy works because stories can heal

First things first. There has been overwhelming evidence for a long time now that homeopathy is a pseudoscience. Consider this. Homeopathy is based on two unconventional theories.

These theories have survived in practice since the 18th century, and across the world. Its creator, Samuel Hahnemann, believed that the more you dilute an active ingredient in water, the more potent the treatment becomes. The idea is that the water retains the “dematerialised spiritual force”, or the “memory”, of the original ingredients used. 

Despite the fact that these foundational tenets of homeopathy have not found a place in modern medicine, studies have routinely appeared over the decades attempting to prove that homeopathic medicines have healing properties.