Polite Dissent

Y: The Last Man #45 “Kimono Dragons, Chapter Three”
Y: The Last Man #46 “Kimono Dragons, Conclusion”
Brian Vaughan, writer
Pia Guerra, artist

In Y: The Last Man #46, Allison Mann’s mother describes herself as a “homeopathic surgeon.” I have some problems with this. First, I’ve made it no secret that I consider homeopathy pure and utter bunk. Second, given the definition of homeopathy, how can one be a homeopathic surgeon?

Homeopathy was started in the early 19th century as an alternative to the conventional medicine of that time. Given that the conventional medicine of the early 1800s was brutal and ineffective (bloodletting, trepanation, etc.) , this is understandable. In the two hundred years since, conventional medicine has become scientifically rigorous and vastly more effective, whereas homeopathy has remained mired in its pre-Victorian view of science and its repeatedly demonstrated ineffectiveness.

Homeopathy follows two principals. The first is the Principle of Similarities, which states that treating a particular symptom necessitates using a substance that causes the same symptom. For instance, if you want to cure a fever, you’d start with a substance that can cause a fever. Next comes the Principle of Infinitesimals, which states that extremely dilute solutions of this substance are required for treatment. How dilute? Not ten times, not a thousand times, not a million times, but many, many orders of magnitude — diluted well past Avogadro’s Number* so that it is unlikely that a single molecule of the original substance remains in the mixture.

Returning to Y: the Last Man, how can a surgeon be homeopathic? Does she use anesthesia that has been diluted so much it is nothing more than pure air? Does she use an incredibly dilute solution of scalpels to cut the patient? Maybe she means that she uses homeopathic medications when medicine is required, but given that she was discussing the use of Morphine and Cloves (Eugenol) in a previous issue, this seems unlikely. The story and characterization suggests that she is a surgeon who tends to use herbal and alternative medications, but not actual homeopathy.

I suspect that Vaughan is using “homeopathic” as a synonym for alternative or non-conventional medicine. It’s an incorrect use of term, but he’s not the first comic book writer to make the same mistake. (In fact, I’ve seen the term slapped willy-nilly over all sorts of dubious alternative medical therapies regardless of whether it actually applies).

As for the abdominal surgery in Y: the Last Man #45, I really don’t have any significant problems with it. It was an emergency surgery performed in an improvised operating room, so I wouldn’t expect all the fancy lights, equipment, and surgical garb one would find in a hospital. Vaughan also cleverly starts the scene as Dr. Matsumori is suturing the incision closed, so all but the clean up is over with. This allows Guerra to escape criticism over surgical imagery (though I have faith in her as she is one of the few artists who has consistently drawn the nasal canula correctly). If I had to nitpick, the scene seems mighty clean for an emergency bowel surgery, and I’m surprised there aren’t any surgical drains being used. I’m not even going to nit-pick the lack of surgical eyewear, because while it’s always a good idea to wear eye protection, OSHA is an American agency, not a Japanese one.