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Shaken, Not Stirred Homeopathy – Dilute and Heal
Homeopathic medicine, discovered by a German physician more than 200 years ago, espouses many concepts seen in other forms of alternative medicine - namely, that the body can and knows how to heal itself. "Everybody's fine and hunky dory with [homeopathic concepts] until they come to the part where the more you dilute and shake the substance, the more powerful it gets and the deeper it reaches," said Dr. Bill Gray, author of "Homeopathy: Science or Myth." Just how the body reacts to varying dosages of medicine is still being debated. Pharmaceutical and herbal medicines both operate under the notion that more is more; the more milligrams per dose, the quicker the cure. Not so in homeopathy. The "law of infinitesimals" states that the more you dilute a drug, the more potent it gets. Remedies are made with one part of the material, which can be a chemical, element, plant, or even poison, added to nine or 99 parts water. The water is vigorously shaken after the material is added. Then one drop of that water is added to another nine or 99 drops of water. This mixture is again shaken and the process repeated. After repeating this hundreds or even thousands of times, the water is poured onto sugar pellets, which is how the medicine is administered.