Physics of homeopathy

[Roger B]

Dear Blessed and Blessing Homeo People,

We do not know how gravity works. There are lots of theories, like gravitons, curved space, etc. We do know that gravity will accelerate an object at 32.174 ft/s2 , etc. So, I guess I am very interested in a description of how homeopathy works. I am not sure of all of the "behaviors" of homeopathy. For example, I was told to put one pellet of hypericum 30C into a glass of distilled water and sip that glass of water all day for pain. I had been using the pellets, and they worked. When I tried the pellet in the water, it worked. That is strange behavior. It is different from the behavior that we are used to, sort of like Relativity, where 1/2 the speed of light + 1/2 the speed of light does not equal 1 times the speed of light but some speed significantly less than the speed of light. The same can be said of the quantum world where things behave in very strange ways also.

When things behave in ways different from what we are used to, then we discount them, call them names, mock them, etc.

I think that it would be useful if all of the behaviors of homeopathy were listed. I can't see that a theory of how it works is going to be worth much if we don't have all of the known facts before us and construct a theory to explain all of the known facts. If we miss a data point or a known fact, it seems to me that we have a theory that isn't worth much.

How come I can drop pellets into a glass of distilled water and it works, yet if I try that to the ocean, it doesn't work? I have tried to explain to people that the ocean is not pure, but I really am not sure why it doesn't work. And, of course, I was mocked for try to use that explanation.

Is the glass of distilled water with a pellet in it just as powerful as the pellets. We don't really know because the best measure of a remedy is a human being. Perhaps there is some microbial measure that would work better, like blahicum 30C killed 90% of the microbes in a petri dish but blahicum 30C in distilled water killed only 45% of the microbes. Is there such a measuring test?

Roger

[John Harvey]

Roger, you've come up with a great "measuring test" here yourself with this example of the antimicrobial power of "blahicum" (whatever that may be; a fiction?). And that experiment appears to confirm nicely something that Hahnemann indicated that explains the apparent discrepancy with the ocean: that dropping the pellet in water weakens the effect of the 30C potency by reducing its dose. Dropping the pellet into a glass of sea water may or may not have the same effect (I suspect not, because of the dissolved solids); but dropping it into an oceanful and taking a spoonful of that is going to result in a very low dose of 30C.

Although Hahnemann indicated that it was scarcely possible to strike a dose too low to be medicinally active, it's worth bearing in mind both (a) that he was not speaking of oceansful of water but of several glasses' worth of serial dilution and (b) that he clearly indicated that such dilution should be accompanied by vigorous stirring: in other words, by the equivalent of limited succussion.

Cheers --

John