Extreme homeopathic dilutions retain starting materials: A nanoparticulate perspective

Abstract

Homeopathy is controversial because medicines in high potencies such as 30c and 200c involve huge dilution factors (10(60) and 10(400) respectively) which are many orders of magnitude greater than Avogadro's number, so that theoretically there should be no measurable remnants of the starting materials. No hypothesis which predicts the retention of properties of starting materials has been proposed nor has any physical entity been shown to exist in these high potency medicines. Using market samples of metal-derived medicines from reputable manufacturers, we have demonstrated for the first time by Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM), electron diffraction and chemical analysis by Inductively Coupled Plasma-Atomic Emission Spectroscopy (ICP-AES), the presence of physical entities in these extreme dilutions, in the form of nanoparticles of the starting metals and their aggregates. Homeopathy (2010) 99, 231-242