Talk:Margery Blackie

A fact from Margery Blackie appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 10 April 2015 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows: Did you know... that when Dr. Margery Blackie treated Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace, she brought arsenic, death cap mushrooms, and Gila monster venom? A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2015/April. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Margery Blackie.

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These statements (although supported by various highly dubious sources) are almost certainly untrue. As a homeopath, she would have prepared "treatments" from these toxins by multi-stage serial dilutions that would leave almost zero chance of there being even a single molecule of those substances left in the water into which she dissolved them.

Hence, it's patently untrue that she brought all of those poisons to the palace. In truth, she brought water, perhaps with an alcohol preservative and either starch or sugar pills.

But that doesn't make quite such a startling story does it?

SteveBaker (talk) 05:23, 10 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]