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Last Witch Effort

Last Witch Effort

by Adam on November 16, 2015 at 12:00 am
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Discussion (26) ¬

  1. Max
    Max
    November 16, 2015, 12:42 am | # | Reply

    It is the same as with praying after an accident or catastrophe: You don’t do it for others or any effect, it is purely psychological (and egoistical to comfort yourself).

    • Jamie
      Jamie
      November 16, 2015, 1:17 am | # | Reply

      God is all-knowing. You don’t need to pray to make him aware that suffering or injustice exists.
      Prayer is only useful if you think you’re more special than everyone else and feel that letting God know that YOU want something to happen is going to push things up His priority list.

      • Cactus Defender
        Cactus Defender
        November 16, 2015, 1:19 am | # | Reply

        Suddenly I don’t feel as terrible for forgetting to pray whenever a tragedy happens somewhere in the world.

      • BugFanNo1Million
        BugFanNo1Million
        November 16, 2015, 11:33 am | # | Reply

        Interesting take, Jamie, but If you accept that God is omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent then He won’t need a “priority list” for one. Also, why are you trying to put a negative spin on prayer?

        • Deth Invictus
          Deth Invictus
          November 30, 2015, 6:29 pm | # | Reply

          Probably because it is for those who have no control over a situation and will grasp at anything to empower themselves?

    • Fesin
      Fesin
      November 16, 2015, 7:49 am | # | Reply

      Fun fact: “Praying for somebody” actually has a negative effect in their recovery. The reasoning is, that when a sick person is told that somebody is praying for them, they believe that their case must be really bad/hopeless, so stress and the nocebo effect step in.

    • Mahnarch
      Mahnarch
      November 17, 2015, 5:29 am | # | Reply

      “Two hands working accomplish more than a thousand clasped in prayer.” – God (probably)

    • Crash Weezerman
      Crash Weezerman
      November 30, 2018, 10:45 am | # | Reply

      Thanks for the words of wisdom. Next time someone tells me about a sick family member, or worse yet, asks for prayer during a hard time, I’ll be sure to do the selfless thing and remind them that the only place their loved ones are going is six feet under the dirt.

  2. Dave Dell
    Dave Dell
    November 16, 2015, 4:30 am | # | Reply

    To paraphrase a line from “Good Omens”: Some people will get better from anything.

    • GuesssWho
      GuesssWho
      November 17, 2015, 11:08 am | # | Reply

      I love that book . . .

  3. Nick K
    Nick K
    November 16, 2015, 7:36 am | # | Reply

    I got a kick out of the surprised-witch-doctor-mask-bug.

  4. Karine76
    Karine76
    November 16, 2015, 7:37 am | # | Reply

    About panel 2, it’s not 0%, it’s basically the placebo effect

  5. Ian Osmond
    Ian Osmond
    November 16, 2015, 7:52 am | # | Reply

    I dunno. My understanding is that witch-doctoring has a pretty good success rate.

    First, you get all the people who were going to get better anyway. You get to count those. And then, you get everybody whose condition is improved by the placebo effect.

    Third, those witch doctors who use herbs and stuff are usually working with some active chemical compounds, some of which have effects.

    All in all, their success rate with some things isn’t THAT much worse than Western doctors — and was a lot BETTER than that of Western doctors in the 18th and early 19th centuries when the term began coming about. Until, say, the mid-19th century, Western doctors had a tendency to make things worse rather than better.

    Once you’ve got Louis Pasteur pushing hygiene and the use of anesthesia in surgery, and people learning about germs and stuff, then, sure, doctors started being better.

    STARTED being better. President James A Garfield was treated by supposedly the best physicians in the country after he was shot in 1881, and THEY hadn’t heard of handwashing. There is a strong case to be made that the doctors killed him through infection. As late as the 1920s, there were still doctors in the United States who were practicing on the Four Humors theory, with bleeding and stuff.

    If it was before 1850, and I had a choice of being treated by a witch doctor or a Western doctor — the witch doctor would be the way to go.

    Better than that would be a veterinarian, though. Veterinarians had to have a success rate, or people wouldn’t hire them again.

  6. Durinn
    Durinn
    November 16, 2015, 8:17 am | # | Reply

    The placebo (and nocebo) effects can be very powerful.

    • Rhea
      Rhea
      November 16, 2015, 12:35 pm | # | Reply

      That’s why people still shell out for colored water called homeopathy.

      • Ian Osmond
        Ian Osmond
        November 18, 2015, 6:59 am | # | Reply

        No! If you COLOR it, it loses all its potency! Because that would mean that it’s got, like, too much stuff in it! You want LESS stuff!

  7. River Road
    River Road
    November 16, 2015, 9:07 am | # | Reply

    Love the expression of his mask in the last panel. Does he change masks for that or just repaint them?

  8. BugMeNot
    BugMeNot
    November 16, 2015, 12:50 pm | # | Reply

    Witch doctors were actually a very early form of necromancer.
    They’d slip a toxin that suppresses heartbeat and causes withering to people, and then dig up the graves in the night. In the morning, they’d tell the at that point very impressionable (having just experienced death, and still having some chemicals in their system) patients a story (such as “I’m god and I resurrected you. Follow me.” or even just “You’re a zombie now. Do what I tell you.”) that would make them carry out the witch doctor’s plans.

    • Mindlink
      Mindlink
      November 16, 2015, 12:54 pm | # | Reply

      I think you are mixing voodoo doctors with witch doctors.

      • BugMeNot
        BugMeNot
        November 16, 2015, 9:51 pm | # | Reply

        Probably. Whatever kind of doctor you choose, though, getting a second opinion is the only safe option, whatever continent you’re on. I understand this may be more or less financially viable in various areas, but the peace of mind is worth it.

    • Chuck Chuckerson
      Chuck Chuckerson
      November 16, 2015, 2:07 pm | # | Reply

      My aunt was cured by a witch doctor. Very common in Nicaragua.

    • Chuck Chuckerson
      Chuck Chuckerson
      November 16, 2015, 2:08 pm | # | Reply

      Whoops, meant to leave a general comment, not a reply. Apologies.

  9. thomas
    thomas
    November 16, 2015, 1:42 pm | # | Reply

    Sooo good. I don’t know how you keep it up with daily jokes and make any progress on your book. if you have made none in the last month, you are hereby absolved by this joke that will get links from Skeptics websites. Dont let the procrastination that goes hand in hand with creativity depress you. i love you and your work. Thank you. Thomas

  10. GuesssWho
    GuesssWho
    November 17, 2015, 11:10 am | # | Reply

    Yeah, hippos are a lot meaner than people tend to think.

    • carnackiArdent
      carnackiArdent
      November 25, 2015, 11:47 pm | # | Reply

      Those teeth aren’t just for decoration.

  11. Catreece
    Catreece
    November 21, 2015, 10:28 pm | # | Reply

    Keep in mind that the vast bulk of our current medicinal knowledge stemmed originally from the spells and “cures” that ancient practitioners of medicine used.

    The majority of what they used was garbage, and often less than helpful, sometimes downright dangerous. However… sometimes they were onto something. They’d treat a fever with a particular ground up root, or an ear infection with sap from a certain tree. They didn’t have any clue WHY it worked, but we’ve later looked into these things like ginger, chocolate, alcohol, cannabis and so on and have discovered that there’s often a very complex chemical makeup of such, and usually there’s one or more actual medicinally useful parts in there.

    Most of modern medicine is just weeding out the excess junk and refining only the parts that are capable of producing very particular effects, such as raising or lowering blood pressure for instance.

    As such, it really wasn’t 0% effective, even discounting things like the whole placebo and nocebo effects – they often did, in fact, have herbal remedies which had some partial degree of value to them. Sure, most of their “cures” did nothing, or worse than nothing, but SOME of their cures actually were the precursors to what we use today, just in an unrefined state is all, so they’d have more side effects and a weaker intentional effect. But they really did have some stuff that actually worked.

    I wouldn’t want to play roulette with my chances of being cured by a witch doctor, but I wouldn’t say it’d be a 0% effectiveness dealie.

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