Trusted
Recently ran into someone who's a huge believer in homeopathy. They're otherwise fine, not antivaxxers or anything, but just believe completely in homeopathy. So I thought I'd have a look at it from a homeopathy practitioner's point of view to see what the arguments were for it (I'm quite familiar with the arguments against it, no need to post those).
First problem was that no two people seem to be able to agree on how the preparation ritual works, some writeups say you dilute 100:1 repeatedly, some say you pour the initial compound into a container, then pour it out and refill with water repeatedly, and another one seems to involve running water over the initial substance, which would certainly make mass production for sale easier. Some practitioners also hit the side of the container, although as with the details of the dilution no-one can seem to agree how many times, how hard, or in what way you're supposed to hit it.
Anyway, taking one particular recipe which says you take the initial substance, pour it into a container, pour it out, pour in water, pour it out, etc, thirty times (hitting the sides optional - and why stop at thirty?), this would result in a final preparation containing zero molecules of the original substance.
Question 1: Since the water being used in the process contains various dissolved substances, wouldn't the final preparation contain a lot of homepathically-enhanced contaminants that have gone through the same process as the original substance?
Question 2: When I put a glass or cup in the dishwasher, the original substance gets poured out, then the dishwasher arm swings around and fills it with water, then it drains out again, etc. At the end of the dishwash process, the dishwasher has done the same thing to the glass as the homeopathic preparation process does. Why is it a homeopathic remedy when done by a person but washed dishes when the same thing is done by a dishwasher? What makes the homeopathic preparation different, since it's exactly the same process?
