Immunology and homeopathy. 1. Historical background
secondary literature · 2005
LINK
SUMMARY
Review used in this case narrowly for one point of chemistry: that serial dilution beyond about 10^-24, which is roughly 24X or 12C in homeopathic notation, gives (in the article's words) 'an increasingly remote chance of containing even only a single molecule or atom of the original compound', a consequence of the Avogadro constant (about 6.022 x 10^23 per mole). Quotation and identifiers are copied from the article (PMID 16322800; DOI 10.1093/ecam/neh141; Evid Based Complement Alternat Med, volume 2, issue 4, pages 441-452, December 2005; authors Bellavite, Conforti, Piasere, Ortolani). Note on use: the review is broadly sympathetic to homeopathy and entertains the possibility of biological effects from ultra-high dilutions; it is cited here only for its statement of the Avogadro dilution limit, not for any efficacy claim, which this case treats as refuted on the trial and meta-analytic evidence (Stolberg 2006; Shang 2005).
NOTES
This review is cited for a single uncontroversial fact of chemistry that bears directly on homeopathy’s law of infinitesimals: once a substance is diluted past roughly the twelfth centesimal step (12C, about 10^-24), the Avogadro constant makes it increasingly improbable that a dose contains even one molecule of the starting material. The article states this explicitly, in the standard 12C / 24X homeopathic notation. Because the same review is, in its broader argument, sympathetic to the possibility that ultra-high dilutions act biologically, it is used here only for the dilution-limit arithmetic and not for any conclusion about clinical effect; this case grounds the efficacy verdict on the controlled-trial and meta-analytic literature instead. Identifiers are copied from the deterministic PubMed and Crossref records (PMID 16322800; DOI 10.1093/ecam/neh141).