Water Diluted in Water: A Short Definition of Homeopathy

You've probably heard of homeopathy. Yet another alternative medicine, promising fast and effective treatment with none of the nasty side effects of conventional medicine. Well, so long as you don't count 'buying water at ridiculous prices' as a nasty side effect, they're half telling the truth.


What are homeopathic remedies? Simply put, the homeopathic formula is to figure out what they want to 'cure' (say, influenza), then find something that causes similar symptoms (like perhaps duck liver), and dilute it in water.  Between dilutions, the mixture is sharply struck - homeopaths believe this process causes the mixture to leave its 'vital imprint' upon the water, which when the concoction is eventually digested, usually at the point where not one molecule of the original substance remains, will somehow cure the body of the disease.
Dilutions are described in a C scale, where 2C is one part original substance (say oil) diluted in one hundred parts water.  Strike ten times, then dilute one part of this diluted oil in another hundred parts water, leaving 1 part oil to ten thousand parts water.

Common dilutions range from 30C, or 1:10^60 parts oil to water, all the way up to 200C, or 1:10^400 parts oil to water.  To demonstrate just how big this is, it has been said 1/3rd of a drop of oil diluted into all the water on earth would give you a dilution of about 13C.  One molecule of oil in the entirety of the observable univese would give you a dilution of 40C.  That duck liver flu remedy mentioned earlier has a dilution of 200C.  That's one molecule of duck liver per 10^320 universes.  That's 1 followed by 320 zeros, or

100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000

universes. That's a lot for just one molecule.

So, odds are against you getting anything but water in your homeopathic remedies, because it's all they are.  Just as likely as getting a single molecule of oil in a 200C dilution? Homeopathic solutions having anything more than a placebo effect.