Homeopathy: Pure Water or Pure Nonsense?

Most homeopathy users believe that it's some kind of herbal remedy. Is it?

by Brian Dunning

Filed under Alternative Medicine, Consumer Ripoffs

Skeptoid #34
March 22, 2007
Podcast transcript | Listen | Subscribe
Also available in Greek | Spanish | Russian

Today we're going to take a tiny sugar pill, infused with specially charged water, and cure our ills in a novel way. For today's topic is homeopathy, one of my favorite of the many popular alternative medicine systems. Homeopathy has a large following, but I suspect that a large number of its customers don't really understand what it is. For example, I asked two friends who are homeopathy users, on separate occasions, to tell me about it. By coincidence both were attempting to treat headaches. Both friends had the same general understanding of what homeopathy is: They said it was essentially an herbal remedy, and that the small pills they were taking contained some sort of herbal extract. They could not have been more wrong. I wonder if they would continue taking it if they knew what homeopathy really is.

Samuel Hahnemann was a German physician. In the late 1700's, all medical conditions were believed to be caused by an imbalance in the four basic bodily humors: blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile. Conventional medical practice was to attempt to equalize these humors by such practices as bloodletting, purging, or leeching. Hahnemann observed that these practices often caused more problems than they solved, and so he set about developing a better, safer way to balance the four humors. He reasoned that the body may be able to balance its own humors, if given a sort of "kick start" by administering a small dose of whatever poison or toxin was thought to cause the imbalance. He called this the Law of Similars. The obvious problem was that administering poisons and toxins would kill the patient, so he devised a system of massively diluting the ingredients with water. Hahnemann claimed that greater dilutions had greater effect in balancing bodily humors, and he called this the Law of Infinitesimals. His dilutions were as high as 1 part in 1030. This proportion is vastly larger than one grain of sand in all the deserts and all the beaches and oceans on the Earth. He published his theory in 1807, and homeopathy was born.

And then Hahnemann did a very subtle, a very clever, little thing. He made up a word. The word he invented is allopathy. Allopathy is Hahnemann's name for all evidence-based medical sciences. That's right: every medical discipline you've ever heard of — including internal medicine, oncology, neurology, cardiology, psychiatry, pathology, surgery, infectious disease, hematology, geriatrics, gastroenterology, ophthalmology, radiology, orthopedics, nephrology, urology, pharmacology, emergency medicine and critical care — they're all simply allopathy. Allopathy is only one word, so it's no better than homeopathy. They're equals. You have the musings of one guy 200 years ago on one hand, and on the other you have everything medical science has taught hundreds of thousands of researchers since then. Homeopathy vs. allopathy. It's nice to be able to conveniently dismiss so much with just one word. This makes it possible to offer the innocent patient Door A or Door B. Knowing nothing further about either choice beyond its one-word name, the innocent victim will probably take whichever the practitioner advises.

Homeopathy shares one very important component with most other alternative medicine systems. It was developed a long time ago, by one man, during a time when almost nothing useful or true was known about medicine, and it is rigidly required to stay frozen in time with the same original ancient worldview. Homeopathy, like other alternative medicine systems, does not, cannot, must not grow, evolve, or improve as we learn more about the human body. If it did adapt to new knowledge, it would cease to be homeopathy and would be something different.

This ability to include and adapt to new knowledge is the central strength of modern medicine. When we learn new things about the body, when we find a better way to treat a condition, we adapt. We publish the results and we train doctors on the new techniques. Every day, the knowledge base that modern medicine is built upon grows. The collective experience of researchers and doctors grows. But for homeopathy, and other alternative medicine systems, the knowledge base stays frozen in 1807. AIDS drugs, for example, are so much better now than they were just ten years ago, and ten years from now, they'll be even better (there may even be a cure). But with homeopathy, AIDS is treated the same way that any unknown illness was treated in 1807: with a vial of water, possibly containing a few molecules of some compound that are hoped might stimulate a balance of bodily humors.

Dilutions of homeopathic products that are sold today usually range from 6X to 30X. This is homeopathy's system for measuring the dilution, and it doesn't mean 1 part in 6 or 1 part in 30. X represents the roman numeral 10. A 6X dilution means one part in 106, or one in one million. A 30X dilution means one part in 1030, or one followed by 30 zeros. A few products are even marketed using the C scale, roman numeral 100. 30C is 10030. That's a staggering number; it's 1 followed by 60 zeros, about the number of atoms in our galaxy. In 1807, they knew more about mathematics and chemistry than they did about medicine, and it was known that there is a maximum dilution possible in chemistry. Some decades later it was learned that this proportion is related to Avogadro's constant, about 6 × 1023. Beyond this limit, where many of Hahnemann's dilutions lay, they are in fact no longer dilutions but are chemically considered to be pure water. So Hahnemann designed a workaround. Hahnemann thought that if a solution was agitated enough, the water would retain a spiritual imprint of the original substance, and could then be diluted without limit. The water is often added to sugar pills for remedies designed to be taken in a pill form. So when you buy homeopathic pills sold today, you're actually buying sugar, water, or alcohol that's "channeling" (for lack of a better term) some described substance. The substance itself no longer remains, except for a few millionth-part molecules in the lowest dilutions.

Let's look again at Avogadro's number. 6 × 1023 atoms is called a mole, a term any chemistry student is familiar with. How big is that number? Well, if you had 500 sheets of paper, you'd have a stack about two and a half inches high, like a ream that you'd buy at the stationery store. If you had 6 × 1023 sheets of paper, your stack would reach all the way from the Earth to the Sun. And not only that: it would reach that distance four hundred million times. Think about that for a moment. One sheet of paper, in a stack that's 400,000,000 times the distance from the Earth to the Sun. That's a typical homeopathic dilution. Sounds pretty potent, doesn't it?

One explanation made by some homeopaths is that it works the same way as a vaccine: putting a tiny amount of a disease-causing agent into the body — not enough to cause the disease, but enough to stimulate the body's natural defenses into fighting off that disease. Well, this is indeed the way a vaccine works, but it's got nothing to do with the way Hahnemann defined homeopathy. Vaccines are used to prevent an illness which does not yet exist in the body by triggering the production of preventive antibodies; and homeopathy is used to fight a disease already in the body, in which case any antibodies would already be in production. The number of the antibodies triggered by a vaccine can be measured in the bloodstream, whereas homeopathy is not intended to, and does not, produce any measurable reaction. Vaccines insert inert versions of the disease-causing agents into the body, where homeopathic substances are the same as that which causes the disease. Finally and most obviously, vaccines contain a large and fully measurable amount of active ingredient, whereas homeopathic remedies contain no measurable active ingredient. So homeopathy can indeed be said to work just like a vaccine; well, at least, it works just like a spiritual imprint of a vaccine.

So why do so many people claim that it works, and swear by it? Homeopathy has been tested over and over again, and though most studies show its effects to be consistent with the placebo effect, a surprisingly large number of studies do show that homeopathy produces results superior to a placebo. But in every one of these cases, doubts have been raised about the quality of evidence in the studies. According to the National Institutes of Health, "Problems include weaknesses in design and/or reporting, choice of measuring techniques, small numbers of participants, and difficulties in replicating results." A favorite study of homeopaths is that of the British Medical Journal in 1991, a meta-analysis of 107 controlled trials over a 25 year period. The majority of the studies did show some positive results, and homeopaths stop there. They stop short of the Journal's final conclusion, which was "At the moment the evidence of clinical trials is positive but not sufficient to draw definitive conclusions because most of the trials are of low methodological quality and because of the unknown role of publication bias." If you need the term "publication bias" translated, it means that the studies showing positive results were conducted and/or published by the homeopathy industry. The British Medical Journal went on to say "This indicates that there is a legitimate case for further evaluation of homeopathy, but only by means of well performed trials."


Well, good luck to you, gentlemen. The UK Society of Homeopaths has stated "It has been established beyond doubt that the randomized controlled trial is not a fitting research tool with which to test homeopathy." In other words, homeopathy has given itself a Get Out of Jail Free card. Tests are not adequate to test them. If you perform a clinical trial, and find that homeopathy is no more effective than a placebo, the reason for the failure is that homeopathy should not be tested. Claimed immunity from scientific scrutiny should stand out as a huge red flag. When you hear anyone defend their claim by stating that its effect cannot be detected through testing, be skeptical.

The upside of homeopathy is that it's not going to hurt anyone, since it lacks any measurable active ingredients. And when treating conditions that are not life threatening, like headaches or fatigue, there's no harm done. There is massive harm done when practitioners or store owners recommend homeopathy as a replacement for real medical treatment when a serious illness exists. Be vigilant, and protect the health of your family, your friends, and yourself.

Brian Dunning

© 2007 Skeptoid Media, Inc. Copyright information

References & Further Reading

BBC. "Homoeopathy's benefit questioned." BBC News. BBC, 26 Aug. 2005. Web. 20 Mar. 2007. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4183916.stm>

Kleijnen J, Knipschild P. "Clinical trials of homoeopathy." British Medical Journal. 9 Feb. 1991, 302(6772): 316-23.

NCAHF. "NCAHF Position Paper on Homeopathy." National Council Against Health Fraud. The National Council Against Health Fraud, Inc., 1 Feb. 1994. Web. 22 Mar. 2007. <http://www.ncahf.org/pp/homeop.html>

Shang, A., Huwiler-Müntener, K., Nartley, L. "Are the clinical effects of homoeopathy placebo effects? Comparative study of placebo-controlled trials of homoeopathy and allopathy." The Lancet. 27 Aug. 2005, Volume 366, Issue 9487: 726-732.

Singh S., Ernst E. Trick or treatment: the undeniable facts about alternative medicine. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2008. 91-144.

Willis, P., et. al. Science and Technology Committee. Evidence Check 2: Homeopathy. London: Stationary Office Limited., 2010.

Reference this article:
Dunning, B. "Homeopathy: Pure Water or Pure Nonsense?" Skeptoid Podcast. Skeptoid Media, Inc., 22 Mar 2007. Web. 31 Oct 2014. <http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4034>


10 most recent comments | Show all 86 comments

I think it is like believing in a anthropomorphic god. Believers tersly say belief needs no proof "I believe & thats it" !!

Sankar Narayan, Mumbai
October 31, 2012 5:30am

Sankar, "i believe" is always paid in money or credibility.

That and its a weasel word for any argument.

Mud, sin city. Oz
February 26, 2013 9:47am

Very Nice work on this topic Brian!

Forgive me if this has been brought up before, but logically, if homeopathy works, then the most dilute of preparations should by assiciation possess the imprint of every known substance (more or less), and thereby be capable of remedying any and every possible "imbalance" in one fell swoop without the need for diagnosis?

And if true, one could also infer that the most dilute of solutions should, by it's very nature, (ie. The past history of the journey of all of the water molecules involved in the dilution process, and all of those substances with which they had interacted and rubbed shoulders throughout their existence) render any user immortal (more or less) providing they avoid fatal injury through physical misadventure?

Though it might be relatively more contaminated with a bit of this or that...(salt, calcium, fluoride, whiskey, poison or whatever) Isn't every drop of water that we take in already by definition the ultimate homeopathic goo already?

Splitbeam, Canada
March 20, 2013 3:05am

Some day someone high profile is going to die of an easily treatable and preventable disease because they went with this quackery instead of real medicine, someone will put it under the microscope and that will hopefully be the end of it.

All the while, the homeos will be screaming and yelling about a microscope being used instead of their special 'super small vision' pill.

Ray Panner, Regina, SK
April 7, 2013 4:36am

For some reason my aunt insists to say that homeopathy cured her. I dont understand people sometimes. She also used allopathy( the most reasonable explanation for the cure), but afirms that she was cured by homeopathy. Why people always choose the option that makes less sense? That could be a nice topic!

Pedro, Brasília/ Brazil
April 28, 2013 8:44am

your Aunt used allopathy???

Was it blood letting, acupuncture, leeches or burning?

I'd love to know..

Mud, sin city, Oz
August 2, 2013 5:09am

Brian,it was interesting reading based on some level of research rather than outrightly rejecting homeopathy.Brian ,I wish I could go by you by all means. But I am selfish,and i tend to believe that alternative medicines do work,may be by incidental. But it doesnt matter as long as it cures me or my wife of incurable diseases in allopathy.I am science phillic man and mock all kinds of magics and tricks.My wife suffered from incurable(as declared by orthopaedic) heel pain,being not able to move. On someones recommendation ,I took a chance with accupuncture. It took a bit of pain and money and she was cured beyond belief ,now spending normal life.Same happened with her migrain and my herpis problem which were cure without recurrence. For chronic problems,I think alternate medicines are mostly effective.One should try them where allopathy doesnt have a cure,at least.

November 1, 2013 12:42am

To the contrary, alternative modalities have been shown to be a scam Meraj, Have we a single alty cure that works? No..

The world throws a lot of money at alternative modalities as per research funding, training and intercomparison. Not only are the amounts obscene but the results are fruitful indeed. We now what clearly doesnt work.

You only need to read the WHO and NIH mongraphs on the abject failure or this endeavour
but in a technological society a search for a modality that may work and training folk in some medical practices has its benefits.

yes, the WHO in 1998 recognised it was archaic claptrap and has retracted many of the weasel words in its alternative modality monographs. The same goes for The NIH and NCCAMs.

The funding since 1990 has approached double that to the profoundly fruitful LHC which has not only generated your voice here, but multi billions of technology for medical applications (amongst a myriad of other things).

We await a result for alternative modalities.

From your anecdotes, I would be looking into your personal lifestyle for disease prevention.

PS Allopathy is alternative. Sorry to have to point that out. Acupuncture is a recognised form of allopathy.

Get your terms in order...

Magnificent Devon, Ich bin ein Berliner?, Pho's diner, greenacres by the sea, Oz
January 1, 2014 9:09pm

I have the same opinion that, Splitbeam, Canada has. If Homeopathy works, as stated, the recommended 6 to 8 glasses of water, per day, should keep everyone healthy.

There are, 4,731.76 drops, in 8 ounces of water.

28390.56 to 37854.08 drops, per day, should surely be enough to cover every possible dilution/ailment. If not, where is the fallacy?

Reno, n/a
January 17, 2014 12:22pm

"where homeopathic substances are the same as that which causes the disease"

As I understand it, the "active ingredient" in a homeopathic remedy could be basically anything. Historically, homeopathic doctors would try out various herbs on themselves, record the symptoms over the course of a few days, then try and match those symptoms up with a known disease. The process is known in homeopathic circles as a "proving," which the homeopathic literature tries - completley unsuccessfully to anyone with any sense - to paint as a sort of proper clinical trial. In fact, it is wholly subjective, useless information. If a particular plant or bark made the "prover" feel achy and feverish in a way that he/she thought matched the symptoms of malaria, then the remedy might be "proven" as a good cure for malaria. So the substance the homeopaths administer is not, I think, actually the one that causes the disease (as in a vaccine), but one that some prover once thought caused similar symptoms. To give a sense of what sorts of crazy things are considered "active ingredients" in homeopathy, one need only take a quick look at the internet. Here's an example of a proving of - get this - badger as an ingredient: http://www.hominf.org/meles/badgintr.htm

Djindjer, Bologna
January 26, 2014 1:42am


Post a reply


What's the most important thing about Skeptoid?

Support Skeptoid

The War of the Worlds Panic Broadcast
Skeptoid #438, Oct 28 2014
Read | Listen (11:56)
Tube Amplifiers
Skeptoid #437, Oct 21 2014
Read | Listen (14:57 )
Skeptoid #436, Oct 14 2014
Read | Listen (10:11)
The St. Clair Triangle UFO
Skeptoid #435, Oct 7 2014
Read | Listen (13:56)
The Braxton County Monster
Skeptoid #434, Sep 30 2014
Read | Listen (11:26)
#1 -
Read | Listen
#2 -
The JFK Assassination
Read | Listen
#3 -
Fukushima vs Chernobyl vs Three Mile Island
Read | Listen
#4 -
The Baldoon Mystery
Read | Listen
#5 -
Listeners Have Another Say
Read | Listen
#6 -
Who Discovered the New World?
Read | Listen
#7 -
Tube Amplifiers
Read | Listen
#8 -
6 Problems with Wind Turbine Syndrome
Read | Listen

Recent Comments...

[Valid RSS]


Members Portal


Follow @BrianDunning

Tweets about "skeptoid"

Support Skeptoid

characters left. Abusive posts and spam will be deleted.