Clearly, this 'less is more' approach is highly controversial as it appears to contradict the findings of modern medicine and just sheer common sense. Indeed, it is the perceived notion that somehow 'nothing can cure something' which sceptics of homeopathy currently use as their main argument to discredit this long-standing therapy, and to brand its practitioners as at best, purveyors of the 'placebo effect': at worst, 'quacks', and 'evil predators' on a gullible public's fears and delusions. These accusations are made supposedly even more damning by the sceptics' persistent (and, as it turns out, false) claims that, despite over 200 years of successfully treating millions of people world-wide, there is no evidence that homeopathy actually 'works'.
There is mounting clinical and biochemical evidence of homeopathy's efficacy (see references below). Also, there are scientists dedicated to understanding the physical basis of homoeopathic potentisation - and therefore how a substance diluted out of existence can exert an effect long after all of its molecules have disappeared. This is without having to overturn the whole canon of modern physics and chemistry. It appears water, that most ubiquitous of life-giving and maintaining fluids, still has surprises in store for scientists.
An increasingly likely explanation of how homeopathy might work is called the Memory of Water hypothesis (MoW). An essential feature of the homeopathic remedy manufacturing process is potentisation. This consists of repeated acts of serial dilution and violent agitation called succussion. Evidence from the materials sciences and physical chemistry suggests that this potentisation process produces a dynamic long-range molecular ordering of the solvent molecules in which the remedy substance was originally dissolved. Consequently, even though molecules of the original substance may have long-since disappeared; still, the remaining solvent molecules would have been 'restructured' forming a dynamic 'template'. Thus, there are reproducibly observable structural differences between substances simply diluted in water, and those treated via the homeopathic remedy manufacturing process, even though chemically, no differences can be found (link to Rao's papers).
This process has been likened to the formatting of computer compact discs: chemically, there is no difference between a formatted and an unformatted CD. However, with the right equipment, differences between them are readily revealed.
How the potentised remedy then goes on to energise the body's self-healing powers is still a matter of intense research. But bearing in mind the large proportion of water that constitutes all living things, it is now recognised that many cellular processes within the body (e.g., the transmission of nerve impulses, etc), depend dynamically upon rapidly alternating structural alignments of water molecules, which allow extremely rapid transmission of electrical charges over large molecular distances.
Thus, the function of water in biochemistry is having to be re-assessed. Up till now, water was simply thought of as a kind of inert medium within cells playing host to all the complex biochemical reactions going on inside them. To give some idea of the complexity of this highly organised biochemistry, if we wished to reproduce just the number of biochemical reaction going on at any one time inside a cell using state of the art processes of conventional chemical manufacturing, we would need a laboratory the size of the United Kingdom! And all this wealth of biochemistry is occurring inside a tiny wriggling little cell that can only be seen with the aid of a microscope.
Adopting a theatrical metaphor, if nucleic acids, proteins, carbohydrates, lipids and hormones, etc are the principal 'actors' in the unfolding biochemical 'drama' that is life at the molecular level, then water provides the stage, set, theatre, and even the overall direction. From this perspective, it could be that conventional biomedicine places too much emphasis on bio-molecules at the expense of the solvent in which they perform.
Because of their individual patterns of electrically charged and neutral atomic constituents, each type of biomolecule will have associated with it an ever-changing 'halo' of loosely bound and interconnected water molecules. At the charged sites on each bio-molecule, water molecules will congregate, while few water molecules gather at the neutral sites. Thus, electric fields generated by bio-molecules will be modified and modulated by their surrounding ever-changing but coherent 'halo' of water molecules, and this could be transmitted extremely rapidly partly via water's rapidly switching network of interconnecting 'hydrogen' bonds, throughout the whole solvent and received by other bio-molecules. With this kind of new understanding, we should expect a scientific explanation of how homeopathy is possible in the not too distant future.
M. Chaplin. Water structure and behaviour. Regularly updated online document at: www.lsbu.ac.uk/water. Accessed November 24, 2009.
S. Samal, K.E. Geckler. Unexpected solute aggregation in water on dilution. Chem Commun 2001; 21: 2224-2225.
V. Elia, M. Niccoli. Thermodynamics of extremely diluted aqueous solutions. Ann NY Acad Sci 1999; 879: 241-248.
J-L. Demangeat. NMR water proton relaxation in unheated and heated ultrahigh aqueous dilutions of histamine: Evidence for an air-dependent supramolecular organisation of water. J Mol Liquids 2009; 144: 32-39.
U. Wolf, M. Wolf, P. Heusser, et al. Homeopathic preparations of quartz, sulfur, and copper sulfate assessed by UV-spectroscopy. Evid Based Complement Alternat Med 2009; May 27:e-pub ahead of print.
L. Rey. Thermoluminescence of ultra-high dilutions of lithium chloride and sodium chloride. Physica (A) 2003; 323: 67-74.
I.R. Bell, D.A. Lewis, A.J. Brooks, et al. Gas discharge visualisation evaluation of ultramolecular doses of homeopathic medicines under blinded, controlled conditions. J Altern Complement Med 2003; 9: 25-38.
R. Roy, W.A. Tiller, I. Bell, M.R. Hoover. The structure of liquid water: Novel insights from materials research. Potential relevance to homeopathy. Mat Res Innov 2005; 9: 557-608.
A. Hankey. Are we close to a theory of energy medicine? J Altern Complement Med 2004; 10: 83-86.
E. Del Guidice, G. Preparata, G. Vitiello. Water as a free electron dipole laser. Phys Rev Lett 1988; 61: 1085–1088.
L. Montagnier, J. Aý¨ssa, S. Ferris, et al. Electromagnetic signals are produced by aqueous nanostructures derived from bacterial DNA sequences. Interdiscip Sci Comput Life Sci 2009; 1: 81-90.
P. Belon, J. Cumps, M. Ennis et al. Histamine dilutions modulate basophil activation. Inflamm Res 2004; 53: 181-8.
C.M. Witt, M. Bluth, H. Albrecht et al. The in vitro evidence for an effect of high homeopathic potencies - a systematic review of the literature. Complement Ther Med 2007; 15: 128-38.
L.R. Milgrom. "Macavity's Not There!" J Altern Comp Med 2009; 15: 1051-1053, and references therein
S. Gariboldi, M. Palazzo, L. Zanobbio et al. Low dose oral administration of cytokines for treatment of allergic asthma. Pulmonary Pharmacology & Therapeutics 2009 doi:10.1016/j.pupt.2009.05.002.
Clearly, this 'less is more' approach is highly controversial as it appears to contradict the findings of modern medicine and just sheer common sense. Indeed, it is the perceived notion that somehow 'nothing can cure something' which sceptics of homeopathy currently use as their main argument to discredit this long-standing therapy, and to brand its practitioners as at best, purveyors of the 'placebo effect': at worst, 'quacks', and 'evil predators' on a gullible public's fears and delusions. These accusations are made supposedly even more damning by the sceptics' persistent (and, as it turns out, false) claims that, despite over 200 years of successfully treating millions of people world-wide, there is no evidence that homeopathy actually 'works'. 
