September 21, 2009 Homeopathy and religion Homeopathic treatment
is based on the belief that if something making you ill, then a
highly diluted solution of that same thing will act as a cure.
It was introduced in 1796 by a German physician named Samuel
Hahnemann who claimed it illustrated the workings of the
'principle of similars' or 'like cures like'. This
counterintuitive notion may have sounded plausible in the late
18th and early 19th centuries, and even now may sound plausible
to those who know that vaccines consist of building antibodies
to a disease by introducing into the body small quantities of
the same or related organisms, The levels of dilution used were
quantified by Hahnemann by something called the "C scale" which
meant diluting by a factor of 100. So 1C dilution meant diluting
by 100, 2C meant diluting by 100x100=104=10,000, 3C meant
diluting by 100x100x100=106=1,000,000, and so on. The substances
are diluted in a stepwise fashion and shaken vigorously between
each dilution. A key feature of