In the late 18th century, during a period of dangerous mainstream medical practices such as purging and blood letting, a controversial new field of study was founded. Samuel Hahnemann, the father of homeopathic medicine, closely studied the different medical practices of his time and grew increasingly dissatisfied with their efficacy. Techniques such as blood-letting and purging as previously mentioned, were rooted in the concept of surgically removing the diseased portion of the body from the host, whether from draining portions of blood or removing entire organs from a patient. Though theoretically beneficial, often times this only worsened the patient’s condition and occasionally proving fatal.
As a result of the unfortunately high mortality rates of 18th century medicine, Hahnemann advocated for the use of single drugs at exceptionally low concentrations, based on a preconceived notion that living things differ from inanimate objects because they are governed by different universal laws. counter intuitively, homeopaths believe that compounds gain strength not from being highly concentrated, but instead from being highly diluted in either a one to ten or one to one hundred ratio. The most common notation is ’30x’ for one to ten, and ’30c’ for one to one hundred, with the ’30’ referring to the number of serial dilutions. As a result, an individual would have to drink 90,921 trillion, trillion, gallons of water, 90 trillion times the amount of water on the Earth, in order to encounter one drop of the original diluted compound at 30x. At 30 c, an individual would need to drink 90,921 billion, trillion, trillion, trillion, gallons of water, almost one trillion times the estimated amount of water in our solar system, before encountering one drop of the original homeopathic compound. With all of this in mind, homeopathic medicine is highly ineffective at treating any illness since the most powerful of homeopathic compounds are so highly diluted that they no longer even contain a single particle of the solution. Historically, these treatments gained such popularity as an alternative medicine because the patient’s self recovery was likely confused with the homeopathic treatment, since the ineffective medicine neither helped nor hindered their recovery.
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