Sorry for the boring look of this, no pictures to catch the eye or anything. Why? Well, because there’s nothing to show in the first place. This is a quick note on homeopathic dilutions and hopefully will explain that when you buy homeopathic medicine, you’re effectively buying nothing.
Let’s take, for example, a product called Oscillococcinum. This supposedly treats flu-like symptoms and shortens the time you have the flu, blah blah blah. The listed active ingredient is Anas barbariae, but the fact is that that isn’t really important at all. What’s important is that it’s listed as having a dilution of 200CK. What does this mean, exactly?
In homeopathy, “C” represents a 1:100 dilution. 1C means there’s one part ingredient, 99 parts inactive ingredient (such as water). 2C is a dilution of 1C, not of the original concentration. So a 2C dilution would be 1:100 of the prior 1:100, or 1:10000. Think about that a moment — every “C” listed is an additional 1/100 of the prior. 3C is 1:1,000,000,… by the time you get to 24C, there likely isn’t a single molecule of the active ingredient left. (You could be lucky and get one...) Not one molecule left at 24C… Oscillococcinum takes that out to 200C.
I don’t know the cost of Oscillococcinum over the counter, but the inactive ingredients are lactose and sucrose. Yes, you’re buying nothing but sugar pills. There is no active ingredient. Money for nothing.
Read labels on homeopathic “medicines” if you think of trying them. Look for the dilution, then look at the inactive ingredients, because that’s what you’re actually paying for.
Edit:
Caj below was kind enough to expand the math further, so with the sincerest of gratitude I’m including that here. When you see the numbers written out in a form we can visually relate to it becomes even more boggling.
I think you’re dramatically understating the mathematical silliness of 24C:
by the time you get to 24C, there likely isn’t a single molecule of the active ingredient left.
A liter of water is about 3.3e25 molecules, so a dilution of about 13C is reaching the point of having a single molecule in a liter of water.
24C is a dilution of 10**48, or about 1 molecule in about 3e22 liters.
The world’s oceans are about 1.3e21, so 24C is about 1 molecule in roughly 22 Earths worth of water.
I drop one molecule of active ingredient somewhere in Earth’s water supply, let’s say near Madacascar, and you get some water in your nose when swimming off the coast of Santa Barbara. That’s about 23-24C.
Again, many thanks to Caj for this effort.