This week I am being my own little placebo experiment. You see, I have eczema on my wrists. I’ve had it for ages, it never goes away or gets worse, but it itches fairly regularly and is a general annoyance. The doctor refuses to prescribe prescription-strength hydrocortisone cream because ‘your skin will get dependent on it.’ To which I argue, ‘well right now my skin is itching, so I would rather be dependent on cream that makes it not itch.’ But apparently that is not a valid argument, and I am sent home with a tub of Vaseline and told not to wash too regularly. Which is not very helpful.

I’m probably allergic to dairy products, because when I was little I had eczema behind my knees and my mum took me off dairy and lo, it vanished. But frankly, I would rather eat chocolate and have itchy wrists than the other way around, so I’ve just accepted that I am always going to have patches of eczema on my wrists. And then I tuck into a consoling bar of Dairy Milk to take my mind off it.

But over Christmas, my Mum suggested I try a homeopathic remedy. And I scorned and ridiculed her because, please woman, I do not believe in that homeopathic herbal hippie nonsense. I am not going to bury half a potato at midnight while wearing a frog around my neck, and even if I did, my wrists would still itch.

But, turns out, homeopathy is not so much about interfering with frogs. Mum sent me a little bottle of pills which are, apparently, homeopathy’s answer to eczema. According to the directions on the bottle, all I have to do is take them three times a day, and, magically, not only will my skin clear up, but even if I stop taking the pills, the eczema won’t come back. This is the claim, anyway.

Now, I am still extremely suspicious, because according to the small print, these magical wondrous pills contain nothing but calcium carbonate. Yep, it’s that stuff that furs up your kettle if you don’t descale regularly. That’s ALL. And I am very very unwilling to accept that I could have cured my eczema years ago if I’d just licked the inside of the damn kettle.

But, I promised my Mum I’d give it a fair try, and I have nothing to lose but itchy wrists and a growing dependence on non-prescription-strength hydrocortisone cream, after all. So for the next two weeks I am going to take the pills exactly as directed on the bottle, and we shall just see. I am performing a new twist on the traditional placebo approach, by taking a medicine I absolutely do not believe will work at all. So if it does work, despite my doubts, then it must really be the shit. Watch this space.