I agree with your sentiment (that is, get browse to work before providing the option to disable it), but browse host will never be 100% effective... it is the nature of networks that some hosts will be less functional than others.

When you disable browsing in emule, it returns a "directory listing denied" error. This response would be just as effective for troubleshooting Browse Host as a directory listing would be.

This is also a good reason for LimeWire devs to implement the option before it appears in a user mod- the official implementation is likely to be friendlier to the network.