Extreme homeopathic dilutions retain starting materials: A nanoparticulate perspective

Prashant Satish Chikramane; Akkihebbal K. Suresh; Jayesh Ramesh Bellare; Shantaram Govind Kane

doi:10.1016/j.homp.2010.05.006

Homeopathy, Table of Contents

Homeopathy 2010; 99(04): 231-242
DOI: 10.1016/j.homp.2010.05.006

Original Paper

Extreme homeopathic dilutions retain starting materials: A nanoparticulate perspective

Prashant Satish Chikramane

¹Department of Chemical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay, Adi Shankaracharya Marg, Powai, Mumbai 400 076, Maharashtra, India

,

Akkihebbal K. Suresh

¹Department of Chemical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay, Adi Shankaracharya Marg, Powai, Mumbai 400 076, Maharashtra, India

²Department of Biosciences and Bioengineering, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay, Adi Shankaracharya Marg, Powai, Mumbai 400 076, Maharashtra, India

,

Jayesh Ramesh Bellare

¹Department of Chemical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay, Adi Shankaracharya Marg, Powai, Mumbai 400 076, Maharashtra, India

²Department of Biosciences and Bioengineering, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay, Adi Shankaracharya Marg, Powai, Mumbai 400 076, Maharashtra, India

,

Shantaram Govind Kane

¹Department of Chemical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay, Adi Shankaracharya Marg, Powai, Mumbai 400 076, Maharashtra, India

› Author Affiliations
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Abstract

Homeopathy is controversial because medicines in high potencies such as 30c and 200c involve huge dilution factors (10⁶⁰ and 10⁴⁰⁰ 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.

Keywords

Homeopathy - Nanoparticles - Nanocrystalline materials - Transmission Electron Microscopy

Full Text

References

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