While there is most certainly a great deal of fraudulent alternative medicine around, there are also many things which do work at least partially. For example I've used colloidal silver and hydrogen peroxide for many years with great results. I too was very sceptical at first until I had the worst sore throat ever, tried OTC medications and nothing helped. An old friend visited, and convinced me to try gargling ionic colloidal silver which I did. After about 4-5 gargles of it, the soreness and inflammation subsided about an hour later. I recovered from the 2 weeks flu I had at the time in a few days afterward. My theory is that the virus hides in the tissue folds in the throat and suppresses the immune systems action in the mouth, which encourages secondary infections from bacteria, and slows down recovery.

Oh and as for argyria / "blue man syndrome" that is just scaremongering primarily. You would have to ingest enormous amounts of colloidal silver for years, at the wrong colloid size for this to occur.

Just my ten cents.