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There are some recent reports about a case where a homeopath treated a child with what they claimed is a homeopathic medicine based on saliva from a rabid dog (lyssinum).

Homeopath and naturopath Anke Zimmermann used diluted saliva from a rabid dog to “treat” a four-year-old boy, according to a blog post she published earlier this year. Zimmermann claims that the potentially infectious and deadly concoction successfully resolved the boy’s aggressive behavior, which she described as a “slightly rabid-dog state.”

Ars Technica: Health experts aghast after homeopath gives kid rabid-dog saliva

Now, the homeopath clearly claims that they treated the boy with this, but what I find quite hard to believe is that the homeopathic preparation is actually based on saliva from a rabid dog. Rabies is a deadly disease, getting a saliva sample from a rabid dog seems difficult enough already, but then also handling it without endangering yourself to create the hopefully harmless final dilutions seems quite difficult.

Is there any evidence that lyssinum is actually based on diluted saliva from a rabid dog?

Mad Scientist
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Yes, according to Health Canada, Canada's department of public health, lyssin/lyssinnum is sourced from the saliva of rabid dogs, and seems to be intended for pets and not people. Thankfully for everyone involved, it seems like it is just as ineffective as any other homeopathic product.

Health Canada Source: Here is Health Canada's information regarding 'nosodes', which are homeopathic products sourced from infectious material. On the linked list, you can see lyssin/lyssinum is in fact sourced from the saliva of rabid dogs. These products must comply with Canada's Non-Prescription Health Products Guide, so rabid dog saliva seems to be the genuine source for lyssinum.

Thankfully, these nosode treatments likely aren't dangerous, since ideally a homeopathic dilution will have no active ingredients left, and thus don't actually do anything. If they were a hazard to health, I presume(and hope) Health Canada would ban them and not provide dosage information.

Most of the homeopathic shops selling it seem to market is a pill supplement, and is intended for pets and not 4-year-olds. Furthermore, according to this study, lyssin supplements appear to be completely lack any evidence of efficacy, at least in regards to similar aggression-causing infections in cats.

As a side note, some homeopathic shops seem to sell lysine, which is an amino acid that certainly does have an effect on health, but is not related to rabid saliva.

Giter
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    The worry isn’t that the properly diluted homœopathic nosode may have an effect; rather, it’s that improperly prepared formulations might not be properly mixed, and therefore could contain orders of magnitude higher concentrations of the pathogen. I don’t know if this ever occurred in homœopathy but toxic impurities (and consequent poisoning) are somewhat common in ayurveda, a similar health scam. – Konrad Rudolph Apr 18 '18 at 16:02
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    Not all products marketed as homeopathic are diluted enough to be safe, and some are contaminated during manufacture. A concrete example is Hyland's homeopathic teething tablets, which cause [seizures and even death](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health-and-fitness/health/potentially-toxic-teething-tablets-still-on-shelves-in-canada/article33911701/). (Because of incidents like these, I don't trust the government to keep dangerous homeopathic medicines off the shelves.) – Laurel Apr 18 '18 at 16:10
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    @KonradRudolp(and Laurel): True, though if the product is still legal(in Canada at least), then presumably the risk of that happening is low enough to pass safety standards. However, lyssin products seem to be marketed for pets, which I assume means they have lower standards and I couldn't find any info on human trials. Personally, I trust the government to keep *dangerous* homeopathic products off the shelf, but I don't trust homeopath-sponsored 'research' papers to be honest about safety... – Giter Apr 18 '18 at 16:15
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    @Giter Unfortunately there's virtually no effective regulation of homoeopathic products, anywhere. – Konrad Rudolph Apr 18 '18 at 16:50
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    @KonradRudolph: Homeopathic products that actually can be provided by doctors have [nearly the same requirements](http://www.hpus.com/eligibility.php) as regular medicine, the first requirement being that it is 'safe and effective'. Unfortunately, this doesn't apply to random firms, who only [need to register](https://www.fda.gov/ICECI/ComplianceManuals/CompliancePolicyGuidanceManual/ucm074360.htm) as a 'drug establishment' to sell what homeopathic product they want, without first proving safety or effectiveness. – Giter Apr 18 '18 at 17:47
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    @Giter if I read that document correctly, it only means that a specific homeopathy organization has to decide that it's safe and effective. If there was an actual working check for effectiveness, homeopathic products would be very unlikely to pass. – Mad Scientist Apr 18 '18 at 19:26
  • @Giter: Then there shouldn't be a single homeopathic remedy thatva doctor could prescribe since there are no homeopathic remedies proven to be effective. – JRE Apr 18 '18 at 19:29
  • @MadScientist: I really doubt any 'alternative' medicine *does* pass, because alternative medicine that is safe and effective is just called medicine. I couldn't find anything concrete, due to most search results being from homeopath sites rather than medical sites, but homeopathic remedies that need a prescription seem to mostly be just dilutions of medicine that requires a prescription, and thus the homeopathic product is either water or water with a small amount of actual prescription medication. – Giter Apr 18 '18 at 19:47
  • @JRE: See my comment to Mad Scientist about what homeopathic products need a prescription. Basically, diluted prescription meds need a prescription. Thankfully, [it seems like the FTC](https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2016/11/ftc-issues-enforcement-policy-statement-regarding-marketing) will (hopefully) be cracking down on the universally false claims of effectiveness for non-prescription homeopathy. – Giter Apr 18 '18 at 19:49
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    If a "homeopathic" remedy actually contains a medicine that is normally used to cure a sickness, then by the rules of homeopathy the diluted version should CAUSE the same sickness. The idea behind homeopathy is that you take something that causes particular symptoms. By diluting it, it reverses the effect and cures you of the symptoms. By that logic, taking a diluted version of a regular medicine ought to make you sick. – JRE Apr 18 '18 at 21:06
  • Reminder: Your theories on government are off-topic here. – Oddthinking Apr 22 '18 at 01:06
  • This answer really suffers from claiming the potion is safe, as discussed in the comments above. – Oddthinking Apr 22 '18 at 01:08
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Lyssinum is made from a rabies "nosode" 1. A nosode in homeopathy refers to a sample from a diseased animal or person 2. This doesn't really give us enough information to say that it was specifically saliva from specifically a rabid dog, but it is at the very least not too far from the truth as claimed by the producers of the 'remedy'.

Note that this doesn't necessarily mean that the producers need to keep around rabid dogs to repeatedly sample from. For one, it's entirely possible that the sample is taken from a deceased animal. More importantly, the nature of dilution ensures that it's really only necessary to take a single sample to produce solutions based on that indefinitely (for all intents and purposes).

Cubic
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